W. H. Auden Quotes

294 Sourced Quotes

A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.

W. H. Auden
Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.

W. H. Auden
To the man-in-the-street, who, I'm sorry to say,
Is a keen observer of life,
The word 'Intellectual' suggests straight away
A man who's untrue to his wife.

W. H. Auden
Aphorisms are essentially an aristocratic genre of writing.

W. H. Auden
A million eyes, a million boots in line,
Without expression, waiting for a sign.

W. H. Auden
I'll love you, dear, I'll love you
Till China and Africa meet,
And the river jumps over the mountain
And the salmon sing in the street, I'll love you till the ocean
Is folded and hung up to dry
And the seven stars go squawking
Like geese about the sky.

W. H. Auden
Base words are uttered only by the base
And can for such at once be understood;
But noble platitudes — ah, there's a case
Where the most careful scrutiny is needed
To tell a voice that's genuinely good
From one that's base but merely has succeeded.

W. H. Auden
Though the great artists of the past could not change the course of history, it is only through their work that we are able to break bread with the dead, and without communion with the dead a fully human life is impossible.

W. H. Auden
Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse.

W. H. Auden
No good opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible.

W. H. Auden
The condition of mankind is, and always has been, so miserable and depraved that, if anyone were to say to the poet: "For God's sake stop singing and do something useful like putting on the kettle or fetching bandages," what just reason could he give for refusing? But nobody says this. The self-appointed unqualified nurse says: "You are to sing the patient a song which will make him believe that I, and I alone, can cure him. If you can't or won't, I shall confiscate your passport and send you to the mines." And the poor patient in his delirium cries: "Please sing me a song which will give me sweet dreams instead of nightmares. If you succeed, I will give you a penthouse in New York or a ranch in Arizona."

W. H. Auden
In Brueghel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away Quite leisurely from the disaster, the ploughman may Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry, But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green water, And the expensive ship that must have seen Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky, Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

W. H. Auden
The law cannot forgive, for the law has not been wronged, only broken; only persons can be wronged. The law can pardon, but it can only pardon what it has the power to punish.

W. H. Auden
He suffers from one great literary defect, which is often found in lonely geniuses: he never knows when to stop. Lonely people are apt to fall in love with the sound of their own voice, as Narcissus fell in love with his reflection, not out of conceit but out of despair of finding another who will listen and respond.

W. H. Auden
Time that with this strange excuse
Pardoned Kipling and his views,
And will pardon Paul Claudel,
Pardons him for writing well.

W. H. Auden
'O plunge your hands in water,
Plunge them in up to the wrist;
Stare, stare in the basin
And wonder what you've missed. 'The glacier knocks in the cupboard,
The desert sighs in the bed,
And the crack in the tea-cup opens
A lane to the land of the dead.'

W. H. Auden
Money is the necessity that frees us from necessity. Of all novelists in any country, Trollope best understands the role of money. Compared with him even Balzac is a romantic.

W. H. Auden
Between the ages of twenty and forty we are engaged in the process of discovering who we are, which involves learning the difference between accidental limitations which it is our duty to outgrow and the necessary limitations of our nature beyond which we cannot trespass with impunity.

W. H. Auden
The aim of education is to induce the largest amount of neurosis that the individual can bear without cracking.

W. H. Auden
Nobody knows what the cause is,
Though some pretend they do;
It's like some hidden assassin
Waiting to strike at you.

W. H. Auden
Over the tea-cups and in the square the tongue has its desire; Still waters run deep, my dear, there's never smoke without fire.

W. H. Auden
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone.
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

W. H. Auden
In a national capital Mirabeau and his set
Attacked mystery ; the packed galleries roared
And history marched to the drums of a clear idea,
The aim of the Rational City, quick to admire,
Quick to tire.

W. H. Auden
Pleasure is by no means an infallible guide, but it is the least fallible.

W. H. Auden
Of all possible subjects, travel is the most difficult for an artist, as it is the easiest for a journalist.

W. H. Auden
When I find myself in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a drawing room full of dukes.

W. H. Auden
Every farthing of the cost,
All the dreaded cards foretell,
Shall be paid, but from this night Not a whisper, not a thought,
Not a kiss nor look be lost.

W. H. Auden
Now the leaves are falling fast,
Nurse's flowers will not last;
Nurses to their graves are gone,
And the prams go rolling on.

W. H. Auden
Moreover, if great men are the only hope of the Evolutionary Process, they are morally bound to rule over the masses for their own good — we are all here on earth to help others: what on earth the others are here for, I don't know — and the masses have no right whatsoever to resist them.

W. H. Auden
In a brothel, both
The ladies and gentlemen
Have nicknames only.

W. H. Auden