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W. H. Auden Quotes - Page 9

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

There are three cardinal rules - don't take somebody else's boyfriend unless you've been specifically invited to do so, don't take a drink without being asked, and keep a scrupulous accounting in financial matters.

There are three cardinal rules - don't take somebody else's boyfriend unless you've been specifically invited to do so, don't take a drink without being asked, and keep a scrupulous accounting in financial matters.

Matter, Three, Funny Business

Pleasure is by no means an infallible critical guide, but it is the least fallible.

Mean, Pleasure, Guides

1963 The Dyer's Hand,'Reading'.

A daydream is a meal at which images are eaten. Some of us are gourmets, some gourmands, and a good many take their images precooked out of a can and swallow them down whole, absent-mindedly and with little relish.

Love, Inspirational, Dream

We who must die demand a miracle. How could the Eternal do a temporal act, The Infinite become a finite fact? Nothing can save us that is possible: We who must die demand a miracle.

Miracle, Demand, Facts

W. H. Auden (2013). “For the Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio”, p.8, Princeton University Press

Without Art, we should have no notion of the sacred; without Science, we should always worship false gods.

Art, Science, Technology

"The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays" by W. H. Auden, ("The Virgin & The Dynamo"), (p. 62), 1962.

It is nonsense to speak of 'higher' and 'lower' pleasures. To a hungry man it is, rightly, more important that he eat than that he philosophize.

Happiness, Men, Important

How happy the lot of the mathematician. He is judged solely by his peers, and the standard is so high that no colleague or rival can ever win a reputation he does not deserve.

Happiness, Math, Science

Murder is unique in that it abolishes the party it injures, so that society has to take the place of the victim and on his behalf demand atonement or grant forgiveness; it is the one crime in which society has a direct interest.

Forgiveness, Party, Unique

The nightingales are sobbing in The orchards of our mothers, And hearts that we broke long ago Have long been breaking others; Tears are round, the sea is deep: Roll them overboard and sleep.

Mother, Heart, Sleep

Even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot Where the dogs go on with their doggy life

Running, Dog, Goes On

"Musee des Beaux Arts" l. 10 (1940)

My face looks like a wedding-cake left out in the rain.

Rain, Cake, Complaining

Quoted in Humphrey Carpenter, W. H. Auden (1981). Leonard L. Levinson, in Bartlett's Unfamiliar Quotations (1971), quotes this comment as being said about Auden by someone else.

Happy the hare at morning, for she cannot read The hunter's waking thoughts.

Morning, Hunters, Waking

A writer, or at least a poet, is always being asked by people who should know better: “Whom do you write for?” The question is, of course, a silly one, but I can give it a silly answer. Occasionally I come across a book which I feel has been written especially for me and for me only. Like a jealous lover I don’t want anybody else to hear of it. To have a million such readers, unaware of each other’s existence, to be read with passion and never talked about, is the daydream, surely, of every author.

Silly, Book, Passion

A poem is a verbal artifact which must be as skillfully and solidly constructed as a table or a motorcycle.

Motorcycle, Tables, Artifacts

Our researchers into Public Opinion are content That he held the proper opinions for the time of year; When there was peace, he was for peace: when there was war, he went. He was married and added five children to the population, Which our Eugenist says was the right number for a parent of his generation, And our teachers report that he never interfered with their education. Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd: Had everything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.

Teacher, Children, War

"The Unknown Citizen" l. 22 (1939)

Courses in prosody, rhetoric and comparative philology would be required of all students, and every student would have to select three courses out of courses in mathematics, natural history, geology, meteorology, archaeology, mythology, liturgics, cooking.

Cooking, Meteorology, Would Be

Most people call something profound, not because it is near some important truth but because it is distant from ordinary life. Thus, darkness is profound to the eye, silence to the ear; what-is-not is the profundity of what-is.

Eye, Profound, People

"Forewords and Afterwords" by W. H. Auden, ("Un Homme d'Esprit"), (p. 361), 1973.

As readers, we remain in the nursery stage so long as we cannot distinguish between taste and judgment, so long, that is, as the only possible verdicts we can pass on a book are two: this I like; this I don't like. For an adult reader, the possible verdicts are five: I can see this is good and I like it; I can see this is good but I don't like it; I can see this is good and, though at present I don't like it, I believe that with perseverance I shall come to like it; I can see that this is trash but I like it; I can see that this is trash and I don't like it.

Perseverance, Book, Believe

"A Certain World: A Commonplace Book". Book by W. H. Auden, 1970.

The most difficult problem in personal knowledge, whether of oneself or of others, is the problem of guessing when to think as a historian and when to think as an anthropologist.

Thinking, Personal Knowledge, Guessing

All I have is a voice to undo the folded lie, the romantic lie in the brain of the sensual man-in-the-street and the lie of Authority whose buildings grope the sky: There is no such thing as the State and no one exists alone; Hunger allows no choice to the citizen or the police; We must love one another or die.

Being Happy, Lying, Men

Another Time (1940) "September 1, 1939"

Few people take an interest in Iceland, but in those few the interest is passionate.

Iceland, People, Passionate

Evil is unspectacular and always human, and shares our bed and eats at our own table.

Evil, Bed, Tables

"Herman Melville" l. 17 (1939)

And make us as Newton was, who in his garden watching The apple falling towards England, became aware Between himself and her of an eternal tie.

Fall, Science, Garden

'Look, Stranger!' (1936) no. 1

Between the ages of twenty and forty we are engaged in the process of discovering who we are, which involves learning the differences between accidental limitations which it is our duty to outgrow and the necessary limitations of our nature beyond which we cannot trespass with impunity.

Differences, Age, Who We Are

Be subtle, various, ornamental, clever, And do not listen to those critics ever Whose crude provincial gullets crave in books Plain cooking made still plainer by plain cooks.

Clever, Book, Cooking

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