W. H. Auden - Time Quotes

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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
There are bills to be paid, machines to keep in repair,
Irregular verbs to learn, the Time Being to redeem
From insignificance.

W. H. Auden
For time is inches
And the heart's changes,
Where ghost has haunted
Lost and wanted.

W. H. Auden
Few can remember
clearly when innocence came
to a sudden end,
the moment at which we ask
for the first time: Am I loved?

W. H. Auden
In headaches and in worry
Vaguely life leaks away,
And Time will have his fancy
To-morrow or today.

W. H. Auden
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
Ideally, government is the means by which all the individual wills are assured complete freedom of moral choice and at the same time prevented from ever clashing.

W. H. Auden
Of Sigmund Freud:
If often he was wrong and at times absurd
To us he is no more a person
Now but a climate of opinion.

W. H. Auden
It is, for example, axiomatic that we should all think of ourselves as being more sensitive than other people because, when we are insensitive in our dealings with others, we cannot be aware of it at the time: conscious insensitivity is a self-contradiction.

W. H. Auden
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
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
Machines have no political opinions, but they have profound political effects. They demand a strict regimentation of time, and, by abolishing the need for manual skill, have transformed the majority of the population from workers into laborers. There are, that is to say, fewer and fewer jobs which a man can find a pride and satisfaction in doing well, more and more which have no interest in themselves and can be valued only for the money they provide.

W. H. Auden
Lay your sleeping head, my love
Human on my faithless arm;
Time and fevers burn away
Individual beauty from
Thoughtful children, and the grave
Proves the child ephemeral;
But in my arms till break of day
Let the living creature lie:
Mortal, guilty, but to me
The entirely beautiful.

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
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 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
This is the Night Mail crossing the Border,
Bringing the cheque and the postal order,
Letters for the rich, letters for the poor,
The shop at the corner, the girl next door.
Pulling up Beattock, a steady climb:
The gradient's against her, but she's on time.
Past cotton-grass and moorland boulder,
Shovelling white steam over her shoulder.

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
And the poor in their fireless lodgings, dropping the sheets
Of the evening paper: "Our day is our loss, O show us
History the operator, the
Organiser, Time the refreshing river." And the nations combine each cry, invoking the life
That shapes the individual belly and orders
The private nocturnal terror:
"Did you not found the city state of the sponge, "Raise the vast military empires of the shark
And the tiger, establish the robin's plucky canton?
Intervene. Descend as a dove or
A furious papa or a mild engineer, but descend."

W. H. Auden
Like everything which is not the involuntary result of fleeting emotion but the creation of time and will, any marriage, happy or unhappy, is infinitely more interesting than any romance, however passionate.

W. H. Auden
Our researchers into Public Opinion are content
That he held the proper opinions for the time of year;
When there was peace, he was for peace; when there was war, he went.

W. H. Auden