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W. H. Auden Quotes - Page 12

All Quotes Acting Affection Age Art Character Children Choices Cooking Country Criticism Culture Dance Dancing Death Desire Drama Earth Ego Evil Fate Fear Feelings Food Funeral Funny Giving God Greek Grief Happiness Healing Heart Hell Helping Others History Homosexuality Honor Hope Hunger Imagination Inspirational Joy Judgment Language Life Listening Love Lying Mankind Money Mountain Mourning Music Nature Passion Past Pleasure Poetry Politics Prayer Quality Reality Religion Running Science Silence Sin Sleep Sorrow Soul Study Success Suffering Time Today Torture Waiting Water Winning Work Writing

Music can be made anywhere, is invisible and does not smell.

Music can be made anywhere, is invisible and does not smell.

Smell, Doe, Invisible

W.H. Auden (2016). “Canción de cuna y otros poemas”, p.259, DEBOLS!LLO

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.

Birthday, Time, Money

Words have no word for words that are not true.

In a land which is fully settled, most men must accept their local environment or try to change it by political means; only the exceptionally gifted or adventurous can leave to seek his fortune elsewhere. In America, on the other hand, to move on and make a fresh start somewhere else is still the normal reaction to dissatisfaction and failure.

Moving, Mean, Men

a culture is no better than its woods

Nature, Woods, Climate

Shield of Achilles (1955) "Bucolics"

Yet no one hears his own remarks as prose.

Listening, Prose, Remarks

Far from his illness The wolves ran on through the evergreen forests, The peasant river was untempted by the fashionable quays; By mourning tongues The death of the poet was kept from his poems.

Rivers, Mourning, Tongue

W.H. Auden (2016). “Canción de cuna y otros poemas”, p.148, DEBOLS!LLO

Aside from purely technical analysis, nothing can be said about music, except when it is bad; when it is good, one can only listen and be grateful.

Grateful, Analysis, Be Grateful

It is already possible to imagine a society in which the majority of the population, that is to say, its laborers, will have almost as much leisure as in earlier times was enjoyed by the aristocracy. When one recalls how aristocracies in the past actually behaved, the prospect is not cheerful.

Past, Cheerful, Majority

Let me see what I wrote so I know what I think

Thinking, Let Me, Knows

The windiest militant trash Important Persons shout Is not so crude as our wish: What mad Nijinsky wrote About Diaghilev Is true of the normal heart; For the error bred in the bone Of each woman and each man Craves what it cannot have; Not universal love But to be loved alone.

Heart, Men, Errors

"September 1, 1939" l. 59 (1939)

In addition to English, at least one ancient language, probably Greek or Hebrew, and two modern languages would be required.

Two, Greek, Would Be

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...

People, History, Firsts

"The Dyer's Hand". "The Listener" Magazine, June 30, 1955.

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.

Sorry, Maturity, Years

It has been said that a poem should not mean but be. This is not quite accurate. In a poem, as distinct from many other kinds of verbal societies, meaning and being are identical. A poem might be called a pseudo-person. Like a person, it is unique and addresses the reader personally. On the other hand, like a natural being and unlike a historical person, it cannot lie.

Lying, Mean, Unique

Source: www.guernicamag.com

Left to itself the masculine imagination has very little appreciation for the here and now; it prefers to dwell on what is absent, on what has been or may be. If men are more punctual than women, it is because they know that, without the external discipline of clock time, they would never get anything done.

Appreciation, Men, Discipline

Follow, poet, follow right To the bottom of the night, With your unconstraining voice Still persuade us to rejoice; With the farming of a verse Make a vineyard of the curse, Sing of human unsuccess In a rapture of distress; In the deserts of the heart Let the healing fountain start, In the prison of his days Teach the free man how to praise.

Healing, Heart, Night

Another Time (1940) "In Memory of W. B. Yeats"

By mourning tongues The death of the poet was kept from his poems.

Mourning, Tongue, Poet

"In Memory of W. B. Yeats" l. 10 (1940)

Marriage is rarely bliss But, surely it would be worse As particles to pelt At thousands of miles per sec About a universe In which a lover's kiss Would either not be felt Or break the loved one's neck.

Kissing, Would Be, Necks

"After Reading a Child's Guide to Modern Physics". Poem by W. H. Auden, 1961.

But if a stranger in the train asks me my occupation, I never answer "writer" for fear that he may go on to ask me what I write, and to answer "poetry" would embarrass us both, for we both know that nobody can earn a living simply by writing poetry.

Writing, Answers, Goes On

There is no love; There are only the various envies, all of them sad.

Sadness, Envy, Various

'In Praise of Limestone' (1951) l. 58

I said earlier that I do not believe an artist's life throws much light upon his works. I do believe, however, that, more often than most people realize, his works may throw light upon his life. An artist with certain imaginative ideas in his head may then involve himself in relationships which are congenial to them.

Believe, Artist, Ideas

"Forewords and Afterwords" by W. H. Auden, ("The Greatest of the Monsters"), (p. 247), 1973.

Lost in a haunted wood, Children afraid of the night Who have never been happy or good.

Children, Fear, Night

W.H. Auden (2016). “Canción de cuna y otros poemas”, p.159, DEBOLS!LLO

In life the loser's score is always zero.

Zero, Losing, Loser

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well That, for all they care, I can go to hell, But on earth indifference is the least We have to dread from man or beast. How should we like it were stars to burn With 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 am Of stars that do not give a damn, I cannot, now I see them, say I missed one terribly all day. Were all stars to disappear or die, I should learn to look at an empty sky And feel its total dark sublime, Though this might take me a little time.

Stars, Passion, Dark

W. H. Auden, “The More Loving One”

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