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W. H. Auden Quotes
294 Sourced Quotes
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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
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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
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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
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Pleasure is by no means an infallible guide, but it is the least fallible.
W. H. Auden
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Of all possible subjects, travel is the most difficult for an artist, as it is the easiest for a journalist.
W. H. Auden
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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
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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
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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
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A vice in common can be the ground of a friendship but not a virtue in common. X and Y may be friends because they are both drunkards or womanizers but, if they are both sober and chaste, they are friends for some other reason.
W. H. Auden
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The most exciting rhythms seem unexpected and complex, the most beautiful melodies simple and inevitable.
W. H. Auden
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The windiest militant trash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish.
W. H. Auden
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The stars are dead. The animals will not look.
We are left alone with our day, and the time is short, and
History to the defeated
May say Alas but cannot help nor pardon.
W. H. Auden
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Without Art, we should have no notion of the sacred; without Science, we should always worship false gods.
W. H. Auden
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In a brothel, both
The ladies and gentlemen
Have nicknames only.
W. H. Auden
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About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along.
W. H. Auden
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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
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Young people, who are still uncertain of their identity, often try on a succession of masks in the hope of finding the one which suits them — the one, in fact, which is not a mask.
W. H. Auden
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Beauty, midnight, vision dies: Let the winds of dawn that blow Softly round your dreaming head Such a day of welcome show Eye and knocking heart may bless, Find our mortal world enough; Noons of dryness find you fed By the involuntary powers, Nights of insult let you pass Watched by every human love.
W. H. Auden
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Sir, no man's enemy, forgiving all
But will his negative inversion, be prodigal.
W. H. Auden
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A shilling life will give you all the facts.
W. H. Auden
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I never write when I'm drunk. Why should one need aids? The Muse is a high-spirited girl who doesn't like to be brutally or coarsely wooed. And she doesn't like slavish devotion — then she lies.
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A craftsman knows in advance what the finished result will be, while the artist knows only what it will be when he has finished it. But it is unbecoming in an artist to talk about inspiration; that is the reader's business.
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Most people are even less original in their dreaming than in their waking life; their dreams are more monotonous than their thoughts and oddly enough, more literary.
W. H. Auden
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Tomorrow for the young the poets exploding like bombs, The walks by the lake, the weeks of perfect communion; Tomorrow the bicycle races Through the suburbs on summer evenings. But today the struggle.
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To choose what is difficult all one's days, as if it were easy, that is faith
W. H. Auden
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Quote of the day
We owe something to extravagance, for thrift and adventure seldom go hand in hand.
Lady Randolph Churchill
W. H. Auden
Creative Commons
Born:
February 21, 1907
Died:
September 29, 1973
(aged 66)
Bio:
Wystan Hugh Auden was an Anglo-American poet noted for his vast poetic work in many forms on many themes.
Known for:
Funeral Blues
Poems
Musée des Beaux Arts
The Unknown Citizen
The Age of Anxiety
Most used words:
man
love
people
time
human
poetry
poet
art
life
law
day
find
heart
dead
lie
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