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W. H. Auden Quotes - Page 15

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

An unmanly sort of man whose love life seems to have been largely confined to crying in laps and playing mouse.

An unmanly sort of man whose love life seems to have been largely confined to crying in laps and playing mouse.

Love Life, Men, Lap

We honor founders of these starving cities, Whose honor is the image of our sorrow.

Cities, Honor, Sorrow

All the literati keep An imaginary friend.

Friendship, Friends, Imaginary Friend

W. H. Auden, “The Fall Of Rome”

Accurate scholarship can unearth the whole offence from luther untill noe that has driven a culture mad. From what occured at linz what huge imago made a psychopathic god. i and the public know what all schoolchildren learn those to whom evil is done do evil in return.

Evil, Mad, Culture

"September 1, 1939" l. 19 (1939)

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.

Fate, Thinking, Long

It's impossible to represent a saint [in Art]. It becomes boring. Perhaps because he is, like the Saturday Evening Post people, inthe position of having almost infinitely free will.

Art, People, Saint

The older lives like not to be stood in rows or at right angles.

Angle

Intellectual disgrace Stares from every human face, And the seas of pity lie Locked and frozen in each eye.

Lying, Sadness, Eye

"In Memory of W. B. Yeats" l. 46 (1940)

Death is the sound of distant thunder at a picnic.

Death, Philosophical, Sound

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

Cells, Convinced

W. H. Auden, “In Memory Of W. B. Yeats”

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

Self, Feelings, Doubt

"Forewords and Afterwords" by W. H. Auden, ("The Protestant Mystics"), (p. 51), 1973.

Lovers have lived so long with giants and elves, they won't believe again in their own size.

Believe, Long, Giants

Anyone who has a child today should train him to be either a physicist or a ballet dancer. Then he'll escape.

Dance, Children, Ballet

One of the troubles of our times is that we are all, I think, precocious as personalities and backward as characters.

Character, Thinking, Personality

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.

Sorry, Men, Intelligent

New Year Letter (1961) note to line 1277

Slavery is so intolerable a condition that the slave can hardly escape deluding himself into thinking that he is choosing to obey his master's commands when, in fact, he is obliged to. Most slaves of habit suffer from this delusion and so do some writers, enslaved by an all too personal style.

Thinking, Style, Suffering

The relation of faith between subject and object is unique in every case. Hundreds may believe, but each has to believe by himself.

Faith, Believe, Unique

To ask the hard question is simple.

Optimistic, Simple, Brainstorming

Poems (1933) no. 27

Those to whom evil is doneDo evil in return.

Compassion, Evil, Return

"September 1, 1939" l. 19 (1939)

Literary confessors are contemptible, like beggars who exhibit their sores for money, but not so contemptible as the public that buys their books.

Money, Book, Confession

Defenceless under the night Our world in stupor lies; Yet, dotted everywhere, Ironic points of light Flash out wherever the Just Exchange their messages: May I, composed like them Of Eros and of dust, Beleaguered by the same Negation and despair, Show an affirming flame.

Lying, Night, Dust

"September 1, 1939" l. 92 (1939) See George H.W. Bush 3

Beloved, we are always in the wrong, Handling so clumsily our stupid lives, Suffering too little or too long, Too careful even in our selfish loves: The decorative manias we obey Die in grimaces round us every day, Yet through their tohu-bohu comes a voice Which utters an absurd command - Rejoice.

Selfish, Stupid, Voice

Lay your sleeping head, my love, Human on my faithless arm.

Sleep, Arms, Faithless

"Lullaby" l. 1 (1940)

Poetry makes nothing happen.

Poet, Happens

"In Memory of W. B. Yeats" l. 36 (1940) See Auden 39; Andrew Fletcher 1; Samuel Johnson 22; Percy Shelley 15; Twain 104

We all have these places where shy humiliations gambol on sunny afternoons.

Sunny Afternoon, Shy, Sunny Day

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