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Home
Authors
W. H. Auden
English
Poet
About the author
No good opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible.
W. H. Auden,
English
Poet
#People
#Feeling
#Opera
No hero is mortal till he dies.
W. H. Auden,
English
Poet
What the mass media offers is not popular art, but entertainment which is intended to be consumed like food, forgotten, and replaced by a new dish.
W. H. Auden,
English
Poet
#Art
#Food
#Popular
#Media
#Entertainment
Every American poet feels that the whole responsibility for contemporary poetry has fallen upon his shoulders, that he is a literary aristocracy of one.
W. H. Auden,
English
Poet
#Responsibility
#American
#Poetry
#Literary
#Aristocracy
Every autobiography is concerned with two characters, a Don Quixote, the Ego, and a Sancho Panza, the Self.
W. H. Auden,
English
Poet
#Self
#Ego
#Autobiography
Evil is unspectacular and always human, and shares our bed and eats at our own table.
W. H. Auden,
English
Poet
#Evil
#Bed
Fame often makes a writer vain, but seldom makes him proud.
W. H. Auden,
English
Poet
#Writer
#Fame
The class distinctions proper to a democratic society are not those of rank or money, still less, as is apt to happen when these are abandoned, of race, but of age.
W. H. Auden,
English
Poet
#Society
#Money
#Age
#Race
#Class
#Rank
The countenances of children, like those of animals, are masks, not faces, for they have not yet developed a significant profile of their own.
W. H. Auden,
English
Poet
#Children
#Animals
#Faces
No human being is innocent, but there is a class of innocent human actions called Games.
W. H. Auden,
English
Poet
#Games
#Being
#Actions
#Class
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,
English
Poet
#Eye
#Repetition
The words of a dead man are modified in the guts of the living.
W. H. Auden,
English
Poet
#Words
#Man
#Living
We are all here on earth to help others; what on earth the others are here for I don't know.
W. H. Auden,
English
Poet
#Earth
#Help
When I am 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,
English
Poet
#Mistake
#Company
#Scientists
When I find myself in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a room full of dukes.
W. H. Auden,
English
Poet
#Mistake
#Company
#Scientists
You know there are no secrets in America. It's quite different in England, where people think of a secret as a shared relation between two people.
W. H. Auden,
English
Poet
#People
#America
#England
#Secrets
You owe it to all of us all get on with what you're good at.
W. H. Auden,
English
Poet
Death is the sound of distant thunder at a picnic.
W. H. Auden,
English
Poet
#Death
#Sound
Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.
W. H. Auden,
English
Poet
#Love
#Water
To save your world you asked this man to die; would this man, could he see you now, ask why?
W. H. Auden,
English
Poet
#Now
#World
#Man
A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.
W. H. Auden,
English
Poet
#Love
#Language
We all have these places where shy humiliations gambol on sunny afternoons.
W. H. Auden,
English
Poet
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, whatever they may be.
W. H. Auden,
English
Poet
#Action
#Life
#May
#Man
#Choice
#Attention
#Consequences
A poet is a professional maker of verbal objects.
W. H. Auden,
English
Poet
A professor is someone who talks in someone else's sleep.
W. H. Auden,
English
Poet
#Sleep
A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us.
W. H. Auden,
English
Poet
A tremendous number of people in America work very hard at something that bores them. Even a rich man thinks he has to go down to the office everyday. Not because he likes it but because he can't think of anything else to do.
W. H. Auden,
English
Poet
#People
#Work
#Man
#America
#Office
A verbal art like poetry is reflective; it stops to think. Music is immediate, it goes on to become.
W. H. Auden,
English
Poet
#Art
#Music
#Poetry
All sins tend to be addictive, and the terminal point of addiction is damnation.
W. H. Auden,
English
Poet
#Addiction
Between friends differences in taste or opinion are irritating in direct proportion to their triviality.
W. H. Auden,
English
Poet
#Friends
#Opinion
#Taste
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,
English
Poet
#People
#First
#Experience
#Poetry
#Obscurity
A poet can write about a man slaying a dragon, but not about a man pushing a button that releases a bomb.
W. H. Auden,
English
Poet
#Man
Art is our chief means of breaking bread with the dead.
W. H. Auden,
English
Poet
#Art
Art is born of humiliation.
W. H. Auden,
English
Poet
#Art
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,
English
Poet
#Love
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,
English
Poet
#Relationships
#Exploitation
All works of art are commissioned in the sense that no artist can create one by a simple act of will but must wait until what he believes to be a good idea for a work comes to him.
W. H. Auden,
English
Poet
#Work
#Will
#Art
#Idea
#Sense
#Act
#Artist
All that we are not stares back at what we are.
W. H. Auden,
English
Poet
History is, strictly speaking, the study of questions; the study of answers belongs to anthropology and sociology.
W. H. Auden,
English
Poet
#Study
#History
#Questions
#Answers
#Anthropology
Perhaps there is only one cardinal sin: impatience. Because of impatience we were driven out of Paradise, because of impatience we cannot return.
W. H. Auden,
English
Poet
#Paradise
#Impatience
Sob, heavy world Sob as you spin, Mantled in mist Remote from the happy.
W. H. Auden,
English
Poet
#World
Some books are undeservedly forgotten; none are undeservedly remembered.
W. H. Auden,
English
Poet
#Books
Some writers confuse authenticity, which they ought always to aim at, with originality, which they should never bother about.
W. H. Auden,
English
Poet
#Writers
#Originality
Learn from your dreams what you lack.
W. H. Auden,
English
Poet
#Dreams
In a world of prayer, we are all equal in the sense that each of us is a unique person, with a unique perspective on the world, a member of a class of one.
W. H. Auden,
English
Poet
#World
#Sense
#Class
#Perspective
#Prayer
It's frightening how easy it is to commit murder in America. Just a drink too much. I can see myself doing it. In England, one feels all the social restraints holding one back. But here, anything can happen.
W. H. Auden,
English
Poet
#America
#England
#Murder
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.
W. H. Auden,
English
Poet
#Love
It takes little talent to see what lies under one's nose, a good deal to know in what direction to point that organ.
W. H. Auden,
English
Poet
#Talent
#Lies
#Direction
Hemingway is terribly limited. His technique is good for short stories, for people who meet once in a bar very late at night, but do not enter into relations. But not for the novel.
W. H. Auden,
English
Poet
#People
#Night
Health is the state about which medicine has nothing to say.
W. H. Auden,
English
Poet
#Nothing
#State
#Health
#Medicine
'Healing,' Papa would tell me, 'is not a science, but the intuitive art of wooing nature.'
W. H. Auden,
English
Poet
#Art
#Science
#Nature
#Wooing
Good can imagine Evil; but Evil cannot imagine Good.
W. H. Auden,
English
Poet
#Evil
In relation to a writer, most readers believe in the Double Standard: they may be unfaithful to him as often as they like, but he must never, never be unfaithful to them.
W. H. Auden,
English
Poet
#May
#Writer
One cannot walk through an assembly factory and not feel that one is in Hell.
W. H. Auden,
English
Poet
#Hell
In times of joy, all of us wished we possessed a tail we could wag.
W. H. Auden,
English
Poet
#Joy
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 practicing it.
W. H. Auden,
English
Poet
#Art
#Culture
#Writing
#Money
#Talking
#Fact
It's a sad fact about our culture that a poet can earn much more money writing or talking about his art than he can by practicing it.
W. H. Auden,
English
Poet
#Art
#Culture
#Writing
#Money
#Talking
#Fact
For who can bear to feel himself forgotten?
W. H. Auden,
English
Poet
Music is the best means we have of digesting time.
W. H. Auden,
English
Poet
#Time
#Music
I don't get acting jobs because of my looks.
W. H. Auden,
English
Poet
#Acting
#Jobs
If time were the wicked sheriff in a horse opera, I'd pay for riding lessons and take his gun away.
W. H. Auden,
English
Poet
#Time
#Opera
My face looks like a wedding-cake left out in the rain.
W. H. Auden,
English
Poet
#Rain
#Wedding
Murder is unique in that it abolishes the party it injures, so that society has to take the place of the victim and on his behalf demand atonement or grant forgiveness; it is the one crime in which society has a direct interest.
W. H. Auden,
English
Poet
#Crime
#Society
#Interest
#Party
#Forgiveness
#Murder
Geniuses are the luckiest of mortals because what they must do is the same as what they most want to do.
W. H. Auden,
English
Poet
#Want
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,
English
Poet
#Time
#Will
#Result
#Creation
#Marriage
#Emotion
#Romance
No poet or novelist wishes he were the only one who ever lived, but most of them wish they were the only one alive, and quite a number fondly believe their wish has been granted.
W. H. Auden,
English
Poet
#Wishes
The center that I cannot find is known to my unconscious mind.
W. H. Auden,
English
Poet
#Mind
#Unconscious
Music can be made anywhere, is invisible and does not smell.
W. H. Auden,
English
Poet
#Music
Murder is commoner among cooks than among members of any other profession.
W. H. Auden,
English
Poet
#Profession
#Murder
Now is the age of anxiety.
W. H. Auden,
English
Poet
#Now
#Age
#Anxiety
Of all possible subjects, travel is the most difficult for an artist, as it is the easiest for a journalist.
W. H. Auden,
English
Poet
#Artist
#Travel
Men will pay large sums to whores for telling them they are not bores.
W. H. Auden,
English
Poet
#Will
#Men
May it not be that, just as we have to have faith in Him, God has to have faith in us and, considering the history of the human race so far, may it not be that "faith" is even more difficult for Him than it is for us?
W. H. Auden,
English
Poet
#God
#May
#History
#Faith
#Race
God bless the USA, so large, so friendly, and so rich.
W. H. Auden,
English
Poet
#God
If equal affection cannot be, let the more loving be me.
W. H. Auden,
English
Poet
#Affection