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W. H. Auden Quotes - Page 4

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

The slogan of Hell: Eat or be eaten. The slogan of Heaven: Eat and be eaten.

The slogan of Hell: Eat or be eaten. The slogan of Heaven: Eat and be eaten.

Heaven, Hell, Slogans

There are good books which are only for adults. There are no good books which are only for children.

Children, Book, Adults

In the eyes of others a man is a poet if he has written one good poem. In his own he is only a poet at the moment when he is making his last revision to a new poem. The moment before, he was still only a potential poet; the moment after, he is a man who has ceased to write poetry, perhaps forever.

Writing, Eye, Men

To pray is to pay attention to something or someone other than oneself. Whenever a man so concentrates his attention - on a landscape, a poem, a geometrical problem, an idol, or the True God - that he completely forgets his own ego and desires, he is praying. The primary task of the schoolteacher is to teach children, in a secular context, the technique of prayer.

God, Prayer, Children

In order that people may be happy in their work, these three things are needed: They must be fit for it: they must not do too much of it: and they must have a sense of success in it - not a doubtful sense, such as needs some testimony of others for its confirmation, but a sure sense, or rather knowledge, that so much work has been done well, and fruitfully done, whatever the world may say or think about it.

Success, Work, Thinking

All I have is a voice.

Voice

Another Time (1940) "September 1, 1939"

To choose what is difficult all one's days, as if it were easy, that is faith

Faith, Easy, Difficult

W. H. Auden (2013). “For the Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio”, p.23, Princeton University Press

A false enchantment can all too easily last a lifetime.

Love, Enchantment, Lasts

History is, strictly speaking, the study of questions; the study of answers belongs to anthropology and sociology.

History, Answers, Study

All wishes, whatever their apparent content, have the same and unvarying meaning: "I refuse to be what I am."

Wish, Refuse

"The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays" by W. H. Auden, ("Interlude: West's Disease"), (p. 241), 1962.

The primary function of poetry, as of all the arts, is to make us more aware of ourselves and the world around us. I do not know if such increased awareness makes us more moral or more efficient. I hope not. I think it makes us more human, and I am quite certain it makes us more difficult to deceive.

Art, Thinking, Poetry

'Healing,' Papa would tell me, 'is not a science, but the intuitive art of wooing nature.'

Art, Nature, Get Well

We were put on this Earth to help others. Why others were put here is beyond me.

Helping Others, Earth, Helping

I don't think the mystical experience can be verbalized. When the ego disappears, so does power over language.

Thinking, Mystical Experiences, Ego

"Paris Review", Writers at Work, 4th series, (p. 266), 1972.

Whatever the field under discussion, those who engage in debate must not only believe in each other's good faith, but also in their capacity to arrive at the truth.

Believe, Fields, Debate

"Forewords and Afterwords" by W. H. Auden, ("The Protestant Mystics"), (p. 52), 1973.

A doctor, like anyone else who has to deal with human beings, each of them unique, cannot be a scientist; he is either, like the surgeon, a craftsman, or, like the physician and the psychologist, an artist. This means that in order to be a good doctor a man must also have a good character, that is to say, whatever weaknesses and foibles he may have, he must love his fellow human beings in the concrete and desire their good before his own.

Love, Character, Mean

Without communication with the dead, a fully human life is not possible.

Communication, Life Is, Human Life

Nobody knows what the cause is, though some pretend they do; it like some hidden assassin waiting to strike at you. Childless women get it, and men when they retire; it as if there had to be some outlet for their foiled creative fire.

Cancer, Men, Fire

To read is to translate, for no two persons' experiences are the same. A bad reader is like a bad translator: he interprets literally when he ought to paraphrase and paraphrases when he ought to interpret literally.

Two, Translate, Reader

The most exciting rhythms seem unexpected and complex, the most beautiful melodies simple and inevitable.

Music, Beautiful, Simple

Every poet has his dream reader: mine keeps a look out for curious prosodic fauna like bacchics and choriambs.

Dream, Looks, Poet

The image of myself which I try to create in my own mind in order that I may love myself is very different from the image which I try to create in the minds of others in order that they may love me.

Love, Order, Mind

Dyer's Hand (1963) "Hic et Ille"

No human being is innocent, but there is a class of innocent human actions called Games.

Playing Games, Class, Innocence

That the speech of self-disclosure should be translatable seems to me very odd, but I am convinced that it is. The conclusion that I draw is that the only quality which all human being without exception possess is uniqueness: any characteristic, on the other hand, which one individual can be recognized as having in common with another, like red hair or the English language, implies the existence of other individual qualities which this classification excludes.

Hair, Self, Hands

Money is the necessity that frees us from necessity.

Money

"Forewords and Afterwords" by W. H. Auden, ("A Poet of the Actual"), (p. 266), 1973.

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