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W. H. Auden Quotes - Page 3

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

To be free is often to be lonely.

To be free is often to be lonely.

Lonely

W. H. Auden, “In Memory Of Sigmund Freud”

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.

Marriage, Interesting, Romance

People always get what they want. But there is a price for everything. Failures are either those who do not know what they want or are not prepared to pay the price asked them. The price varies from individual to individual. Some get things at bargain-sale prices, others only at famine prices. But it is no use grumbling. Whatever price you are asked, you must pay.

Pay The Price, People, Grumbling

I think the first prerequisite to civilization is an ability to make polite conversation.

Thinking, Civilization, Firsts

Weep for the lives your wishes never led.

Life, Hope, Wish

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.

Art, Media, Political

"The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays" by W. H. Auden, ("The Poet & The City"), (p. 83), 1962.

Every high C accurately struck demolishes the theory that we are the irresponsible puppets of fate or chance.

Fate, Puppets, Chance

"Notes on Music and Opera". Essay by W. H. Auden, published in his book "The Dyer's Hand" (p. 471), 1963.

All good art is in the nature of a letter written to amuse a sick friend. Too much art, particularly in our time, is only a letter written to oneself.

Art, Sick, Letters

I'll love you till the ocean Is folded and hung up to dry And the seven stars go squawking Like geese about the sky.

Love, Stars, Ocean

Another Time (1940) "As I Walked Out One Evening"

A verbal art like poetry is reflective; it stops to think. Music is immediate, it goes on to become.

Music, Art, Thinking

Water is the soul of the Earth.

Water, Soul, Earth

Some writers confuse authenticity, which they ought always to aim at, with originality, which they should never bother about.

Confusion, Confusing, Funny Basketball

A professor is someone who talks in someone else's sleep.

Inspirational, Graduation, Education

A poet is a professional maker of verbal objects.

Poetic, Poet, Makers

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.

Past, Reality, Men

Now is the age of anxiety.

Birthday, Anxiety, Age

Most people enjoy the sight of their own handwriting as they enjoy the smell of their own farts.

Sight, Smell, People

Base words are uttered only by the base And can for such at once be understood; But noble platitudes - ah, there's a case Where the most careful scrutiny is needed To tell a voice that's genuinely good From one that's base but merely has succeeded.

Voice, Noble, Cases

"Base words are uttered". Poem by W. H. Auden, 1940.

A small grove massacred to the last ash, An oak with heart-rot, give away the show: This great society is going to smash; They cannot fool us with how fast they go, How much they cost each other and the gods. A culture is no better than its woods.

Heart, Giving, Environmental

Shield of Achilles (1955) "Bucolics"

The definition of prayer is paying careful and concentrated attention to something other than your own constructions.

Prayer, Attention, Definitions

God may reduce you on Judgment Day to tears of shame, reciting by heart the poems you would have written, had your life been good.

Heart, Tears, May

The masculine imagination lives in a state of perpetual revolt against the limitations of human life. In theological terms, one might say that all men, left to themselves, become gnostics. They may swagger like peacocks, but in their heart of hearts they all think sex an indignity and wish they could beget themselves on themselves. Hence the aggressive hostility toward women so manifest in most club-car stories.

Sex, Heart, Men

Great art is clear thinking about mixed feelings.

Art, Thinking, Feelings

There must always be two kinds of art: escape-art, for man needs escape as he needs food and deep sleep, and parable-art, that art which shall teach man to unlearn hatred and learn love.

Art, Sleep, Men

Art is our chief means of breaking bread with the dead.

Art, Mean, Breaking Silence

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