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W. H. Auden Quotes - Page 8

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

Art is born of humiliation.

Art is born of humiliation.

Art, Born, Humiliation

In Stephen Spender World Within World (1951) ch. 2

The law cannot forgive, for the law has not been wronged, only broken; only persons can be wronged. The law can pardon, but it can only pardon what it has the power to punish.

Law, Broken, Forgiving

"The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays" by W. H. Auden, ("The Prince's Dog"), (p. 201), 1962.

Machines are beneficial to the degree that they eliminate the need for labor, harmful to the degree that they eliminate the need for skill.

Science, Skills, Degrees

The words of a dead man are modified in the guts of the living.

Death, Men, Gmos

W.H. Auden (2016). “Canción de cuna y otros poemas”, p.148, DEBOLS!LLO

The critical opinions of a writer should always be taken with a large grain of salt. For the most part, they are manifestations of his debate with himself as to what he should do next and what he should avoid.

Taken, Criticism, Salt

There has been a vast output of critical studies in contemporary poetry, some of them first rate, but I do not think that , as a rule, a poet should read them.

Thinking, Firsts, Study

I am sure it is everyone’s experience, as it has been mine, that any discovery we make about ourselves or the meaning of life is never, like a scientific discovery, a coming upon something entirely new and unsuspected; it is rather, the coming to conscious recognition of something, which we really knew all the time but, because we were unwilling to formulate it correctly, we did not hitherto know we knew.

Discovery, Meaning Of Life, Recognition

May it not be that, just as we have to have faith in Him, God has to have faith in us and, considering the history of the human race so far, may it not be that 'faith' is even more difficult for Him than it is for us?

Race, May, Have Faith

It is a sad fact about our culture that a poet can earn much more money writing or talking about his art than he can by practicing it.

Art, Money, Writing

Dyer's Hand (1963) foreword

We are not commanded (or forbidden) to love our mates, our children, our friends, our country because such affections come naturally to us and are good in themselves, although we may corrupt them. We are commanded to love our neighbor because our natural attitude toward the other is one of either indifference or hostility.

Love, Country, Children

Precisely because we do not communicate by singing, a song can be out of place but not out of character; it is just as credible that a stupid person should sing beautifully as that a clever person should do so.

Song, Clever, Stupid

Cathedrals, luxury liners laden with souls, Holding to the east their hulls of stone.

Luxury, Soul, Hull

The only reason the Protestants and Catholics have given up the idea of universal domination is because they've realised they can't get away with it.

Ideas, Catholic, Religion

If it really was Queen Elizabeth who demanded to see Falstaff in a comedy, then she showed herself a very perceptive critic. But even in The Merry Wives of Windsor, Falstaff has not and could not have found his true home because Shakespeare was only a poet. For that he was to wait nearly two hundred years till Verdi wrote his last opera. Falstaff is not the only case of a character whose true home is the world of music; others are Tristan, Isolde and Don Giovanni.

Queens, Character, Home

Genealogies are admirable things, provided they do not encourage the curious delusion that some families are older than others.

Curious, Genealogy, Delusion

"Forewords and Afterwords" by W. H. Auden, ("As It Seemed to Us"), (p. 498), 1973.

Our sufferings and weaknesses, in so far as they are personal, are of no literary interest whatsoever. They are only interesting in so far as we can see them as typical of the human condition.

Writing, Interesting, Suffering

The element of craftsmanship in poetry is obscured by the fact that all men are taught to speak and most to read and write, while very few men are taught to draw or paint or write music.

Writing, Men, Taught

A vice in common can be the ground of a friendship but not a virtue in common. X and Y may be friends because they are both drunkards or womanizers but, if they are both sober and chaste, they are friends for some other reason.

May, Vices, Common

"The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays" by W. H. Auden, ("Don Juan"), (p. 403), 1962.

Fate succumbs many a species: one alone jeopardises itself.

Life, Fate, Species

It's frightening how easy it is to commit murder in America. Just a drink too much. I can see myself doing it. In England, one feels all the social restraints holding one back. But here, anything can happen.

America, Scary, Too Much

The true men of action in our time, those who transform the world, are not the politicians and statesmen, but the scientists

Men, World, Action

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

Of course,Behaviourism 'works'. So does torture.

Doe, Torture, No Nonsense

If music in general is an imitation of history, opera in particular is an imitation of human willfulness; it is rooted in the fact that we not only have feelings but insist upon having them at whatever cost to ourselves. The quality common to all the great operatic roles, e.g., Don Giovanni, Norma, Lucia, Tristan, Isolde, Br?nnhilde, is that each of them is a passionate and willful state of being. In real life they would all be bores, even Don Giovanni.

Real, Feelings, Quality

Every autobiography is concerned with two characters, a Don Quixote, the Ego, and a Sancho Panza, the Self.

Character, Self, Two

"The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays" by W. H. Auden, ("Hic et Ille"), (p. 96), 1962.

Drama began as the act of a whole community. Ideally, there would be no speculators. In practice, every member of the audience should feel like an understudy.

Drama, Practice, Community

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