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W. H. Auden Quotes
294 Sourced Quotes
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There is no love;
There are only the various envies, all of them sad.
W. H. Auden
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If it form the one landscape that we the inconstant ones
Are consistently homesick for, this is chiefly
Because it dissolves in water.
W. H. Auden
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Blessed be all metrical rules that forbid automatic responses, force us to have second thoughts, free us from the fetters of Self.
W. H. Auden
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We till shadowed days are done,
We must weep and sing
Duty's conscious wrong,
The Devil in the clock
W. H. Auden
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In headaches and in worry
Vaguely life leaks away,
And Time will have his fancy
To-morrow or today.
W. H. Auden
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The primary function of poetry, as of all the arts, is to make us more aware of ourselves and the world around us. I do not know if such increased awareness makes us more moral or more efficient. I hope not. I think it makes us more human, and I am quite certain it makes us more difficult to deceive.
W. H. Auden
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Though one cannot always Remember exactly why one has been happy, There is no forgetting that one was.
W. H. Auden
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Encased in talent like a uniform, The rank of every poet is well known; They can amaze us like a thunderstorm, Or die so young, or live for years alone.
W. H. Auden
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Cathedrals, luxury liners laden with souls, Holding to the east their hulls of stone.
W. H. Auden
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If age, which is certainly Just as wicked as youth, look any wiser, It is only that youth is still able to believe It will get away with anything, while age Knows only too well that it has got away with nothing.
W. H. Auden
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To me Art's subject is the human clay, / And landscape but a background to a torso; / All Cezanne's apples I would give away / For one small Goya or a Daumier.
W. H. Auden
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To be happy means to be free, not from pain or fear, but from care or anxiety.
W. H. Auden
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So long as we think of it objectively, time is Fate or Chance, the factor in our lives for which we are not responsible, and about which we can do nothing; but when we begin to think of it subjectively, we feel responsible for our time, and the notion of punctuality arises.
W. H. Auden
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The mass and majesty of this world, all
That carries weight and always weighs the same
Lay in the hands of others; they were small
And could not hope for help and no help came:
What their foes like to do was done, their shame
Was all the worst could wish; they lost their pride
And died as men before their bodies died.
W. H. Auden
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Almost all of our relationships begin and most of them continue as forms of mutual exploitation, a mental or physical barter, to be terminated when one or both parties run out of goods.
W. H. Auden
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The mystics themselves do not seem to have believed their physical and mental sufferings to be a sign of grace, but it is unfortunate that it is precisely physical manifestations which appeal most to the religiosity of the mob. A woman might spend twenty years nursing lepers without having any notice taken of her, but let her once exhibit the stigmata or live for long periods on nothing but the Host and water, and in no time the crowd will be clamoring for her beatification.
W. H. Auden
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For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives
In the valley of its saying where executives
Would never want to tamper.
W. H. Auden
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Normally, when one passes someone on the street who is in pain, one either tries to help him, or one simply looks the other way. With a photo there's no human decision; you're not there; you can't turn away; you simply gape. It's a form of voyeurism.
W. H. Auden
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The true men of action in our time, those who transform the world, are not the politicians and statesmen, but the scientists. Unfortunately, poetry cannot celebrate them because their deeds are concerned with things, not persons and are, therefore speechless.
W. H. Auden
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When Statesmen gravely say, We must be realistic,
The chances are they're weak and, therefore, pacifistic,
But when they speak of Principles, look out:: perhaps
Their generals are already poring over maps.
W. H. Auden
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Let us then
Consider rather the incessant Now of
The traveler through time, his tired mind
Biased towards bigness since his body must
Exaggerate to exist, possessed by hope...
W. H. Auden
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The friends who met here and embraced are gone, Each to his own mistake;
W. H. Auden
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God may reduce you on Judgment Day to tears of shame, reciting by heart the poems you would have written, had your life been good.
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Gossip is the art-form of the man and woman in the street, and the proper subject for gossip, as for all art, is the behavior of mankind.
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All the rest is silence On the other side of the wall, And the silence ripeness, And the ripeness all.
W. H. Auden
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Quote of the day
Time and trouble will tame an advanced young woman, but an advanced old woman is uncontrollable by any earthly force.
Dorothy L. Sayers
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
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life
law
day
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