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W. H. Auden Quotes - Page 7

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

Into this neutral air Where blind skyscrapers use Their full height to proclaim The strength of Collective Man, Each language pours its vain Competitive excuse.

Into this neutral air Where blind skyscrapers use Their full height to proclaim The strength of Collective Man, Each language pours its vain Competitive excuse.

Men, Air, Height

W.H. Auden (2016). “Canción de cuna y otros poemas”, p.159, DEBOLS!LLO

Say this city has ten million souls, Some are living in mansions, some are living in holes: Yet there’s no place for us, my dear, yet there’s no place for us.

Cities, Soul, Holes

Narcissus does not fall in love with his reflection because it is beautiful, but because it is his. If it were his beauty that enthralled him, he would be set free in a few years by its fading.

Love, Beautiful, Fall

When I am in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a drawing room full of dukes.

Mistake, Science, Drawing

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

Of all possible subjects, travel is the most difficult for an artist, as it is the easiest for a journalist.

Travel, Artist, Difficult

God is Love, we are taught as children to believe. But when we first begin to get some inkling of how He loves us, we are repelled; it seems so cold, indeed, not love at all as we understand the word.

Love, God, Children

Between friends differences in taste or opinion are irritating in direct proportion to their triviality.

Funny Friendship, Funny Best Friend, Differences

Some books are undeservedly forgotten; none are undeservedly remembered.

Book, Beer, Quality

The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays pt. 1 (1962)

A poet must never make a statement simply because it is sounds poetically exciting; he must also believe it to be true.

Believe, Writing, Poetry

Dance till the stars come down from the rafters Dance, Dance, Dance 'till you drop.

Inspirational, Dance, Stars

W.H. Auden (2016). “Canción de cuna y otros poemas”, p.106, DEBOLS!LLO

And none will hear the postman’s knock Without a quickening of the heart. For who can bear to feel himself forgotten?

Heart, Bears, Forgotten

1936 'Night Mail', written to accompany a documentary by the Post Office Film Unit.

Poetry is the only art people haven't learned to consume like soup.

Art, People, Poetry

The truly tragic kind of suffering is the kind produced and defiantly insisted upon by the hero himself so that, instead of making him better, it makes him worse and when he dies he is not reconciled to the law but defiant, that is, damned. Lear is not a tragic hero, Othello is.

Hero, Law, Suffering

"Forewords and Afterwords" by W. H. Auden, ("The Greeks and Us"), (p. 21), 1973.

To hunt for symbols in a fairy tale is absolutely fatal.

Fairy Tale, Tales, Hunts

The way to read a fairy tale is to throw yourself in.

Angel, Way, Fairytale

In relation to a writer, most readers believe in the Double Standard: they may be unfaithful to him as often as they like, but he must never, never be unfaithful to them.

Believe, Writing, Double Standard

All poets adore explosions, thunderstorms, tornadoes, conflagrations, ruins, scenes of spectacular carnage. The poetic imagination is not at all a desirable quality in a statesman.

Leadership, Imagination, Quality

"The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays". Book by W. H. Auden. Chapter: "The Poet and The City", p. 84, 1962.

Criticism should be a casual conversation.

Criticism, Should, Conversation

Of course, Behaviourism 'works'. So does torture. Give me a no-nonsense, down-to-earth behaviourist, a few drugs, and simple electrical appliances, and in six months I will have him reciting the Athanasian Creed in public.

Funny, Science, Simple

A CertainWorld "Behaviorism" (1970)

He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

Love, Death, Song

"Funeral Blues" l. 9 (1936)

The belief that politics can be scientific must inevitably produce tyrannies. Politics cannot be a science, because in politics theory and practice cannot be separated, and the sciences depend upon their separation. Empirical politics must be kept in bounds by democratic institutions, which leave it up to the subjects of the experiment to say whether it shall be tried, and to stop it if they dislike it, because, in politics, there is a distinction, unknown to science, between Truth and Justice.

Practice, Justice, Politics

One cannot review a bad book without showing off.

Book, Criticism, Reviews

Dyer's Hand (1963) "Reading"

About suffering they were never wrong, The Old Masters; How well they understood Its human position; how it takes place While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along.

Suffering, Sorrow, Window

"Musee des Beaux Arts" l. 1 (1940)

Attacking bad books is not only a waste of time but also bad for the character. If I find a book really bad, the only interest I can derive from writing about it has to come from myself, from such display of intelligence, wit and malice as I can contrive. One cannot review a bad book without showing off.

Book, Writing, Character

Drama is based on the Mistake.

Mistake, Drama

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