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W. H. Auden Quotes - Page 6

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

Oh, how I wish that Orwell were still alive, so that I could read his comments on contemporary events!

Oh, how I wish that Orwell were still alive, so that I could read his comments on contemporary events!

Science, Wish, Events

We were put on this earth to make things.

Earth

Almost all of our relationships begin and most of them continue as forms of mutual exploitation, a mental or physical barter, to be terminated when one or both parties run out of goods.

Love, Relationship, Running

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

Man desires to be free and he desires to feel important. This places him in a dilemma, for the more he emancipates himself from necessity the less important he feels.

Men, Important, Desire

A tremendous number of people in America work very hard at something that bores them. Even a rich man thinks he has to go down to the office everyday. Not because he likes it but because he can't think of anything else to do.

Work, Thinking, Men

I'll love you, dear, I'll love you till China and Africa meet and the river jumps over the mountain and the salmon sing in the street.

Love, Valentines Day, Rivers

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

I will love you forever" swears the poet. I find this easy to swear too. "I will love you at 4:15 pm next Tuesday" - Is that still as easy?

Love You, Pms, Tuesday

To discover how to be human now is the reason we follow this star.

Stars, Reason, Humans

W. H. Auden (2013). “For the Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio”, p.28, Princeton University Press

Why doesn't the United States take over the monarchy and unite with England? England does have important assets. Naturally the longer you wait, the more they will dwindle. At least you could use it for a summer resort instead of Maine.

Summer, Waiting, Important

Drama is based on the Mistake. I think someone is my friend when he really is my enemy, that I am free to marry a woman when in fact she is my mother, that this person is a chambermaid when it is a young nobleman in disguise, that this well-dressed young man is rich when he is really a penniless adventurer, or that if I do this such and such a result will follow when in fact it results in something very different. All good drama has two movements, first the making of the mistake, then the discovery that it was a mistake.

Mother, Mistake, Drama

The true men of action in our time those who transform the world are not the politicians and statesmen but the scientists. Unfortunately poetry cannot celebrate them because their deeds are concerned with things, not persons, and are therefore speechless. When I find myself in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a drawing room full of dukes.

Art, Mistake, Science

Dyer's Hand (1963) "The Poet and the City"

Recipe for the upbringing of a poet: 'As much neurosis as the child can bear.

Children, Recipes, Neurosis

If there are any souls in hell, it is because that is where they insist on being.

Soul, Hell, Ifs

Get up very early and get going at once. In fact, work first and wash afterwards.

Firsts, Facts, Get Up

The ear tends to be lazy, craves the familiar and is shocked by the unexpected; the eye, on the other hand, tends to be impatient, craves the novel and is bored by repetition.

Eye, Hands, Bored

As a poet, there is only one political duty, and that is to defend one's language from corruption.

Political, Language, Corruption

I see little hope for a peaceful world until men are excluded from the realm of foreign policy altogether and all decisions concerning international relations are reserved for women, preferably married ones.

Men, Decision, Peaceful

Goodness is easier to recognize than to define.

Relationship, Goodness, Easier

Health is the state about which medicine has nothing to say.

Medicine, Medical, States

A poet can write about a man slaying a dragon, but not about a man pushing a button that releases a bomb.

Writing, Men, Dragons

"Best Quotes of '54, '55, '56". Book edited by James Beasley Simpson, 1957.

It's frightfully important for a writer to be his age, not to be younger or older than he is. One might ask, "What should I write at the age of sixty-four," but never, "What should I write in 1940."

Writing, Important, Age

"Paris Review", Writers at Work, 4th series, (p. 250), 1972.

It is, for example, axiomatic that we should all think of ourselves as being more sensitive than other people because, when we are insensitive in our dealings with others, we cannot be aware of it at the time: conscious insensitivity is a self-contradiction.

Thinking, Self, People

"Forewords and Afterwords" by W. H. Auden, ("Markings"), (p. 438), 1973.

The glacier knocks in the cupboard, The desert sighs in the bed, And the crack in the teacup opens A lane to the land of the dead.

Land, Bed, Cracks

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

No good opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible.

Funny, Music, People

Quoted in Time, 29 Dec 1961.

In the end, art is small beer. The really serious things are earning one's living so as not to be a parasite and loving one's neighbor.

Life, Art, Beer

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