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W. H. Auden Quotes - Page 5

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

Learn from your dreams what you lack.

Learn from your dreams what you lack.

Dream, Your Dreams

Adjectives are the potbelly of poetry.

Poetry, Adjectives

A dead man who never caused others to die seldom rates a statue.

Men, Dead Man, Rate

What we have not named as a symbol escapes our notice.

Symbols

We are all here on earth to help others.

Funny Life, Helping Others, Earth

W H Auden (1981). “Antæus”, Ecco Press

A man is a form of life that dreams in order to act and acts in order to dream.

Dream, Men, Order

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.

Stars, Passion, Return

W. H. Auden, “The More Loving One”

History marched to the drums of a clear idea...

Ideas, March, Clear

"Memorial for the City". Poem by W. H. Auden, 1947.

What answer to the meaning of existence should one require beyond the right to exercise one's gifts?

Exercise, Answers, Should

No hero is mortal till he dies.

Hero, Demise, Dies

A person incapable of imaging another world than given to him by his senses would be subhuman, and a person who identifies his imaginary world with the world of sensory fact has become insane.

Insane, Facts, Would Be

Cats can be very funny, and have the oddest ways of showing they're glad to see you.

Cat, Way, Glad

The theater has never been any good since the actors became gentlemen.

Gentleman, Acting, Actors

A poet's hope: to be, like some valley cheese, local, but prized elsewhere.

Hope, Food, Cooking

Collected Poems (1976) p. 639

The poet marries the language, and out of this marriage the poem is born.

Language, Poet, Born

If we really want to live, we'd better start at once to try.

Success, Trying, Want

Political history is far too criminal to be a fit subject of study for the young. Children should acquire their heroes and villians from fiction.

Children, Hero, History

Though one cannot always Remember exactly why one has been happy, There is no forgetting that one was.

Remember, Forget, Has Beens

No being can make another one happy.

Happiness

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.

Men, Choices, Attention

Men will pay large sums to whores for telling them they are not bores.

Men, Pay, Bores

Sincerity is technique.

Technique, Crafts, Sincerity

The ideal audience the poet imagines consists of the beautiful who go to bed with him, the powerful who invite him to dinner and tell him secrets of state, and his fellow-poets. The actual audience he gets consists of myopic schoolteachers, pimply young men who eat in cafeterias, and his fellow-poets. This means, in fact, he writes for his fellow-poets.

Beautiful, Powerful, Writing

Time will say nothing but I told you so, Time only knows the price we have to pay; If I could tell you I would let you know.

Pay, Told You So, Knows

The stars are not wanted now, put out every one Pack up the moon & dismantle the sun.

Stars, Moon, Funeral

W.H. Auden (2016). “Canción de cuna y otros poemas”, p.87, DEBOLS!LLO

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