W. H. Auden Quotes

294 Sourced Quotes

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

W. H. Auden
Without Art, we should have no notion of the sacred; without Science, we should always worship false gods.

W. H. Auden
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
Time will say nothing but I told you so, Time only knows the price we have to pay; If I could tell you I would let you know.

W. H. Auden
The most exciting rhythms seem unexpected and complex, the most beautiful melodies simple and inevitable.

W. H. Auden
To choose what is difficult all one's days, as if it were easy, that is faith

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

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

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

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
Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.

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

W. H. Auden
Any one who attempts to translate from one tongue into another will know moods of despair when he feels he is wasting his time upon an impossible task. But, irrespective of success or failure, the mere attempt can teach a writer much about his own language which he would find it hard to learn elsewhere.

W. H. Auden
Put the car away; when life fails
What's the good of going to Wales?
Here am I, here are you:
But what does it mean? What are we going to do?

W. H. Auden
I am beginning to lose patience
With my personal relations.
They are not deep
And they are not cheap.

W. H. Auden
All sin tends to be addictive, and the terminal point of addiction is what is called damnation.

W. H. Auden
Each in the cell of himself is almost convinced of his freedom.

W. H. Auden
Unfortunately for the modern dramatist, during the past century and a half the public realm has been less and less of a realm where human deeds are done, and more and more of a realm of mere human behavior. The contemporary dramatist has lost his natural subject.

W. H. Auden
This marble monument was erected by the state.
Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:
Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.

W. H. Auden
The mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day.
What instruments we have agree
The day of his death was a dark cold day.

W. H. Auden
You shall love your crooked neighbour, with your crooked heart.

W. H. Auden
The basic stimulus to the intelligence is doubt, a feeling that the meaning of an experience is not self-evident.

W. H. Auden
Some thirty inches from my nose
The frontier of my Person goes,
And all the untilled air between
Is private pagus or demesne.
Stranger, unless with bedroom eyes
I beckon you to fraternize,
Beware of rudely crossing it:
I have no gun, but I can spit.

W. H. Auden