W. H. Auden Quotes - Page 15

Quotes about:

• Acts of injustice done
  Between the setting and the rising sun
  In history lie like bones, each one.

  W. H. Auden

  Lying, Rising, Done

  "The Ascent of F6: A Tragedy in Two Acts". Play by W. H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood, 1936.

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• The closest modern equivalent to the Homeric hero is the ace fighter pilot.

  W. H. Auden

  Hero, Pilots, Aces

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• Ideally, government is the means by which all the individual wills are assured complete freedom of moral choice and at the same time prevented from ever clashing.

  W. H. Auden

  Mean, Government, Choices

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• Politics cannot be a science, because in politics theory and practice cannot be separated, and the sciences depend upon their separation.

  W. H. Auden

  Practice, Separation, Theory

  "A Certain World: A Commonplace Book" by W. H. Auden, Viking Press, 1st edition, ("Tyranny"), 1970.

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• There is a great deal of difference in believing something still, and believing it again.

  W. H. Auden

  Believe, Differences, Deals

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• There's only one good test of pornography. Get twelve normal men to read the book, and then ask them, ''Did you get an erection?'' If the answer is ''Yes'' from a majority of the twelve, then the book is pornographic.

  W. H. Auden

  Book, Men, Majority

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• Dance, dance, dance till you drop.

  W. H. Auden

  Dance, Ballet Class, Dancing

  'Letter to William Coldstream, Esq.' (1937).

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• I'm always amazed at the American practice of allowing one party to a homosexual act to remain passive--it's so undemocratic. Sexmust be mutual.

  W. H. Auden

  Party, Practice, Homosexuality

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• Hemingway is terribly limited. His technique is good for short stories, for people who meet once in a bar very late at night, but do not enter into relations. But not for the novel.

  W. H. Auden

  Writing, Night, People

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• At first critics classified authors as Ancients, that is to say, Greek and Latin authors, and Moderns, that is to say, every post-Classical Author. Then they classified them by eras, the Augustans, the Victorians, etc., and now they classify them by decades, the writers of the '30's, '40's, etc. Very soon, it seems, they will be labeling authors, like automobiles, by the year.

  W. H. Auden

  Latin, Years, Greek

  "The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays" by W. H. Auden, ("Reading"), (p. 12), 1962.

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• Herds of reindeer move across Miles and miles of golden moss

  W. H. Auden

  Nature, Moving, Moss

  'The Fall of Rome' (1951)

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• 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

  Stars, Heart, Men

  Letter from Iceland (1937, by Auden and MacNeice) "Letter to William Coldstream, Esq."

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• We all have these places where shy humiliations gambol on sunny afternoons.

  W. H. Auden

  Sunny Afternoon, Shy, Sunny Day

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• The older lives like not to be stood in rows or at right angles.

  W. H. Auden

  Angle

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• So long as we think of it objectively, time is Fate or Chance, the factor in our lives for which we are not responsible, and about which we can do nothing; but when we begin to think of it subjectively, we feel responsible for our time, and the notion of punctuality arises.

  W. H. Auden

  Fate, Thinking, Long

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• An unmanly sort of man whose love life seems to have been largely confined to crying in laps and playing mouse.

  W. H. Auden

  Love Life, Men, Lap

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• We honor founders of these starving cities,
  Whose honor is the image of our sorrow.

  W. H. Auden

  Cities, Honor, Sorrow

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• Accurate scholarship can
  unearth the whole offence
  from luther untill noe
  that has driven a culture mad.
  From what occured at linz
  what huge imago made
  a psychopathic god.
  i and the public know
  what all schoolchildren learn
  those to whom evil is done
  do evil in return.

  W. H. Auden

  Evil, Mad, Culture

  "September 1, 1939" l. 19 (1939)

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• The basic stimulus to the intelligence is doubt, a feeling that the meaning of an experience is not self-evident.

  W. H. Auden

  Self, Feelings, Doubt

  "Forewords and Afterwords" by W. H. Auden, ("The Protestant Mystics"), (p. 51), 1973.

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• Few can remember
  clearly when innocence came
  to a sudden end,
  the moment at which we ask
  for the first time: Am I loved?

  W. H. Auden

  Firsts, Innocence, Remember

  W. H. Auden, Katherine Bucknell (2003). “Juvenilia: Poems, 1922-1928”, p.28, Princeton University Press

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• There are not many English novels which deserve to be called great: Parade's End is one of them.

  W. H. Auden

  Parades, Ends, Novel

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• Harrow the house of the dead; look shining at New styles of architecture, a change of heart.

  W. H. Auden

  Change, Heart, Shining

  'Sir, No Man's Enemy' (1955)

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• To my generation no other English poet seemed so perfectly to express the sensibility of a male adolescent. If I do not now turn to him very often, I am eternally grateful to him for the joy he gave me in my youth.

  W. H. Auden

  Grateful, Joy, Males

  1972 Of A E Housman.'A Worcestershire Lad', collected in Forewords and After words (1973).

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• Earth, receive an honored guest; William Yeats is laid to rest. Let the Irish vessel lie Emptied of its poetry.

  W. H. Auden

  Art, Lying, Poetry

  "In Memory of W. B. Yeats" l. 42 (1940)

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• The parlour cars and Pullmans are packed also with scented assassins, salad-eaters who murder on milk.

  W. H. Auden

  Car, Assassins, Salad

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