W.H. Auden Quotes

It is a sad fact about our culture that a poet can earn much more money writing or talking about his art than he can by practising it.
W.H. Auden
When we do evil We and our victims Are equally bewildered.
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
Choice of attention-to pay attention to this and ignore that-is to the inner life what choice of action is to the outer. In both cases a man is responsible for his choice and must accept the consequences.
W.H. Auden
Nobody can honestly think of himself as a strong character because however successful he may be in overcoming them he is necessarily aware of the doubts and temptations that accompany every important choice.
W.H. Auden
The ear tends to be lazy craves the familiar and is shocked by the unexpected the eye on the other hand tends to be impatient craves the novel and is bored by repetition.
W.H. Auden
The ear tends to be lazy craves the familiar and is shocked by the unexpected the eye on the other hand tends to be impatient craves the novel and is bored by repetition.
W.H. Auden
My poetry doesn't change from place to place - it changes with the years. It's very important to be one's age. You get ideas you have to turn down - 'I'm sorry no longer' 'I'm sorry not yet.'
W.H. Auden
Any marriage happy or unhappy is infinitely more interesting and significant than any romance however passionate.
W.H. Auden
Among those whom I like or admire I can find no common denominator but among those whom I love I can: all of them make me laugh.
W.H. Auden
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
Man is a history-making creature who can neither repeat his past nor leave it behind.
W.H. Auden
To be happy means to be free not from pain or fear but from care or anxiety.
W.H. Auden
It is nonsense to speak of 'higher' and 'lower' pleasures. To a hungry man it is rightly more important that he eat than that he philosophize.
W.H. Auden
We are all here on earth to help others what on earth the others are here for I don't know.
W.H. Auden
If we really want to live we'd better start at once to try.
W.H. Auden
Geniuses are the luckiest of mortals because what they must do is the same as what they most want to do.
W.H. Auden
The relation of faith between subject and object is unique in every case. Hundreds may believe but each has to believe by himself.
W.H. Auden
What the mass media offer is not popular art but entertainment which is intended to be consumed like food forgotten and replaced by a new dish.
W.H. Auden
Choice of attention ... is to the inner life what choice of action is to the outer. In both cases a man is responsible for his choice and must accept the consequences whatever they may be.
W.H. Auden
Choice of attention to pay attention to this and ignore that is to the inner life what choice of action is to the outer.
W.H. Auden
Let us humour if we can The vertical man Though we value none But the horizontal one.
W.H. Auden
Cathedrals Luxury liners laden with souls Holding to the east their hulls of stone.
W.H. Auden
Some books are undeservedly forgotten none are undeservedly remembered.
W.H. Auden
All I have is a voice.
W.H. Auden
Like Pascal, Nietzsche, and Simone Weil, Kierkegaard is one of those writers whom it is very difficult to estimate justly. When one reads them for the first time, one is bowled over by their originality . . . and by the sharpness of their insights. . . . But with successive readings one’s doubts grow, one begins to react against their overemphasis on one aspect of the truth at the expense of all the others, and one’s first enthusiasm may all too easily turn to an equally exaggerated aversion. Of all such writers, one might say that one cannot imagine them as children. The more we read them, the more we become aware that something has gone badly wrong with their affective life; . . . it is not only impossible to imagine one of them as a happy husband or wife, it is impossible to imagine their having a single intimate friend to whom they could open their hearts.
W.H. Auden
A dead man who never caused others to die seldom rates a statue.
W.H. Auden
The way to read a fairy tale is to throw yourself in.
W.H. Auden
I have never, I think, wanted to 'belong' to a group whose interests were not mine, nor have I resented exclusion. Why should thet accept me? All I have ever asked is that others should go their way and let me go mine.
W.H. Auden
In most poetic expressions of patriotism, it is impossible to distinguish what is one of the greatest human virtues from the worst human vice, collective egotism.
W.H. Auden
After Portia has trapped Shylock through his own insistence upon the letter of the law of Contract, she produces another law by which any alien who conspires against the life of a Venetian citizen forfeits his goods and places his life at the Doge’s mercy. […] Shakespeare, it seems to me, was willing to introduce what is an absurd implausibility for the sake of an effect which he could not secure without it: at the last moment when, through his conduct, Shylock has destroyed any sympathy we may have felt for him earlier, we are reminded that, irrespective of his personal character, his status is one of inferiority. A Jew is not regarded, even in law, as a brother.
W.H. Auden
Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can; all of them make me laugh.
W.H. Auden
In times of joy, all of us wished we possessed a tail we could wag.
W.H. Auden
In accepting and defending the social institution of slavery, the Greeks were harder-hearted than we but clearer-headed; they knew that labor as such is slavery, and that no man can feel a personal pride in being a laborer. A man can be proud of being a worker – someone, that is, who fabricates enduring objects, but in our society, the process of fabrication has been so rationalized in the interests of speed, economy and quantity that the part played by the individual factory employee has become too small for it to be meaningful to him as work, and practically all workers have been reduced to laborers. It is only natural, therefore, that the arts which cannot be rationalized in this way – the artist still remains personally responsible for what he makes – should fascinate those who, because they have no marked talent, are afraid, with good reason, that all they have to look forward to is a lifetime of meaningless labor. This fascination is not due to the nature of art itself, but to the way in which an artists works; he, and in our age, almost nobody else, is his own master. The idea of being one’s own master appeals to most human beings, and this is apt to lead to the fantastic hope that the capacity for artistic creation is universal, something nearly all human beings, by virtue, not by some special talent, but due to their humanity, could do if they tried.
W.H. Auden
We are, for all our polish, of littlestature, and, as human lives,compared with authentic martyrs,of no account.
W.H. Auden
Drama is based on the Mistake.
W.H. Auden
Christmas and Easter can be subjects for poetry, but Good Friday, like Auschwitz, cannot. The reality is so horrible it is not surprising that people should have found it a stumbling block to faith.
W.H. Auden
As for Iago’s jealousy, one cannot believe that a seriously jealous man could behave towards his wife as Iago behaves towards Emilia, for the wife of a jealous husband is the first person to suffer. Not only is the relation of Iago and Emilia, as we see it on stage, without emotional tension, but also Emilia openly refers to a rumor of her infidelity as something already disposed of.Some such squire it wasThat turned your wit, the seamy side withoutAnd made you to suspect me with the Moor.At one point Iago states that, in order to revenge himself on Othello, he will not rest till he is even with him, wife for wife, but, in the play, no attempt at Desdemona’s seduction is made. Iago does not encourage Cassio to make one, and he even prevents Roderigo from getting anywhere near her.Finally, one who seriously desires personal revenge desires to reveal himself. The revenger’s greatest satisfaction is to be able to tell his victim to his face – "You thought you were all-powerful and untouchable and could injure me with impunity. Now you see that you were wrong. Perhaps you have forgotten what you did; let me have the pleasure of reminding you."When at the end of the play, Othello asks Iago in bewilderment why he has thus ensnared his soul and body, if his real motive were revenge for having been cuckolded or unjustly denied promotion, he could have said so, instead of refusing to explain.
W.H. Auden
Soft as the earth is mankind and both need to be altered.
W.H. Auden
Before people complain of the obscurity of modern poetry, they should first examine their consciences and ask themselves with how many people and on how many occasions they have genuinely and profoundly shared some experience with another.
W.H. Auden
Every autobiography is concerned with two characters, a Don Quixote, the Ego, and a Sancho Panza, the Self.
W.H. Auden
The More Loving OneLooking up at the stars, I know quite wellThat, for all they care, I can go to hell,But on earth indifference is the leastWe have to dread from man or beast.How should we like it were stars to burnWith a passion for us, we could not return?If equal affection cannot be,Let the more loving one be me.Admirer as I think I amOf stars that do not give a damn,I cannot, now I see them, sayI missed one terribly all day.Were all stars to disappear or die,I should learn to look at an empty skyAnd feel its total dark sublime,Though this might take me a little time.
W.H. Auden
I write because I love to play with language.
W.H. Auden
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 partners run out of goods.But if the seed of a genuine disinterested love, which is often present, is ever to develop, it is essential that we pretend to ourselves and to others that it is stronger and more developed than it is, that we are less selfish than we are. Hence the social havoc wrought by the paranoid to whom the thought of indifference is so intolerable that he divides others into two classes, those who love him for himself alone and those who hate him for the same reason.Do a paranoid a favor, like paying his hotel bill in a foreign city when his monthly check has not yet arrived, and he will take this as an expression of personal affection – the thought that you might have done it from a general sense of duty towards a fellow countryman in distress will never occur to him. So back he comes for more until your patience is exhausted, there is a row, and he departs convinced that you are his personal enemy. In this he is right to the extent that it is difficult not to hate a person who reveals to you so clearly how little you love others.
W.H. Auden
He who despises himself, nevertheless esteems himself as a self-despiser. (Nietz
W.H. Auden
The slogan of Hell: Eat or be eaten. The slogan of Heaven: Eat and be eaten.
W.H. Auden
A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us.
W.H. Auden
Murder is commoner among cooks than among members of any other profession.
W.H. Auden
My second thoughts condemnAnd wonder how I dareTo look you in the eye.What right have I to swearEven at one a.m.To love you till I die?Earth meets too many crimesFor fibs to interest her;If I can give my word,Forgiveness can recurAny number of timesIn Time. Which is absurd.Tempus fugit. Quite.So finish up your drink.All flesh is grass. It is. But who on earth can thinkWith heavy heart or lightOf what will come of this?
W.H. Auden
And maps can really point to placesWhere life is evil now:Nanking. Dachau.
W.H. Auden
The enlightenment driven away,The habit-forming pain,Mismanagement and grief:We must suffer them all again.
W.H. Auden
Evil is unspectacular and always human,And shares our bed and eats at our own table ....
W.H. Auden
I know nothing, except what everyone knows - if there when Grace dances, I should dance.
W.H. Auden
Some writers confuse authenticity, which they ought always to aim at, with originality, which they should never bother about.
W.H. Auden
No poet or novelist wishes he was the only one who ever lived, but most of them wish they were the only one alive, and quite a number believe their wish has been granted.
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
The desires of the heart are as crooked as corkscrews.
W.H. Auden
The desires of the heart are as crooked as corkscrewsNot to be born is the best for manThe second best is a formal orderThe dance's pattern, dance while you can.Dance, dance, for the figure is easyThe tune is catching and will not stopDance till the stars come down from the raftersDance, dance, dance till you drop.
W.H. Auden
Laziness acknowledges the relation of the present to the past but ignores its relation to the future; impatience acknowledge its relation to the future but ignores its relation to the past; neither the lazy nor the impatient man, that is, accepts the present instant in its full reality and so cannot love his neighbour completely.
W.H. Auden
Every man carries with him through life a mirror, as unique and impossible to get rid of as his shadow.
W.H. Auden