W. H. Auden Quotes
There is a certain kind of person who is so dominated by the desire to be loved for himself alone that he has constantly to test those around him by tiresome behavior; what he says and does must be admired, not because it is intrinsically admirable, but because it is his remark, his act. Does not this explain a good deal of avant-garde art?
W. H. Auden
Quotes to Explore
The thin-lipped armorer, Hephaestos, hobbled away, Thetis of the shining breasts Cried out in dismay At what the god had wrought To please her son, the strong Iron-hearted man-slaying Achilles Who would not live long.
W. H. Auden
Music is the best means we have of digesting time.
W. H. Auden
Earth, receive an honored guest; William Yeats is laid to rest. Let the Irish vessel lie Emptied of its poetry.
W. H. Auden
Follow, poet, follow right To the bottom of the night, With your unconstraining voice Still persuade us to rejoice; With the farming of a verse Make a vineyard of the curse, Sing of human unsuccess In a rapture of distress; In the deserts of the heart Let the healing fountains start, In the prison of his days Teach the free man how to praise.
W. H. Auden
Without Art, we should have no notion of the sacred; without Science, we should always worship false gods.
W. H. Auden
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.
W. H. Auden
Evil is unspectacular and always human, and shares our bed and eats at our own table.
W. H. Auden
The desires of the heart are as crooked as corkscrews Not to be born is the best for man The second best is a formal order The dance's pattern, dance while you can. Dance, dance, for the figure is easy The tune is catching and will not stop Dance till the stars come down from the rafters Dance, dance, dance till you drop.
W. H. Auden
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.
W. H. Auden
For who can bear to feel himself forgotten?
W. H. Auden
My face looks like a wedding-cake left out in the rain.
W. H. Auden
If equal affection cannot be, let the more loving be me.
W. H. Auden
I and the public know What all schoolchildren learn, Those to whom evil is done Do evil in return.
W. H. Auden
Music can be made anywhere, is invisible and does not smell.
W. H. Auden
The Ogre does what ogres can,Deeds quite impossible for Man,But one prize is beyond his reach,The Ogre cannot master Speech:About a subjugated plain,Among its desperate and slain,The Ogre stalks with hands on hips,While drivel gushes from his lips.
W. H. Auden
To ask the hard question is simple, The simple act of the confused will.
W. H. Auden
The windiest militant trash Important Persons shout Is not so crude as our wish.
W. H. Auden
Every autobiography is concerned with two characters, a Don Quixote, the Ego, and a Sancho Panza, the Self.
W. H. Auden
