W. H. Auden Quotes - Page 16

Quotes about:

• Beloved, we are always in the wrong, Handling so clumsily our stupid lives, Suffering too little or too long, Too careful even in our selfish loves: The decorative manias we obey Die in grimaces round us every day, Yet through their tohu-bohu comes a voice Which utters an absurd command - Rejoice.

  W. H. Auden

  Selfish, Stupid, Voice

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• I don't get acting jobs because of my looks.

  W. H. Auden

  Jobs, Acting, Looks

  7 Copy quote

• Lovers have lived so long with giants and elves, they won't believe again in their own size.

  W. H. Auden

  Believe, Long, Giants

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• Literary confessors are contemptible, like beggars who exhibit their sores for money, but not so contemptible as the public that buys their books.

  W. H. Auden

  Money, Book, Confession

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• All the literati keep
  An imaginary friend.

  W. H. Auden

  Friendship, Friends, Imaginary Friend

  W. H. Auden, “The Fall Of Rome”

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• Anyone who has a child today should train him to be either a physicist or a ballet dancer. Then he'll escape.

  W. H. Auden

  Dance, Children, Ballet

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• What is a Professor of Poetry? How can poetry be professed?

  W. H. Auden

  Poetry, Professors, Poetry Is

  4 Copy quote

• Now the leaves are falling fast,
  Nurse's flowers will not last;
  Nurses to their graves are gone,
  And the prams go rolling on.

  W. H. Auden

  Flower, Fall, Nurse

  "Autumn Song". Poem by W. H. Auden, 1936.

  52 Copy quote

• Detective stories have nothing to do with works of art.

  W. H. Auden

  Art, Stories, Detectives

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• Slavery is so intolerable a condition that the slave can hardly escape deluding himself into thinking that he is choosing to obey his master's commands when, in fact, he is obliged to. Most slaves of habit suffer from this delusion and so do some writers, enslaved by an all too personal style.

  W. H. Auden

  Thinking, Style, Suffering

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• The actors today really need the whip hand. They're so lazy. They haven't got the sense of pride in their profession that the less socially elevated musical comedy and music hall people or acrobats have. The theater has never been any good since the actors became gentlemen.

  W. H. Auden

  Pride, Hands, People

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• The trees encountered on a country stroll Reveal a lot about that country's soul ... A culture is no better than its woods.

  W. H. Auden

  Country, Tree, Soul

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• In Brueghel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away Quite leisurely from the disaster, the ploughman may Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry, But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green water, And the expensive ship that must have seen Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky, Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

  W. H. Auden

  Fall, Boys, Sky

  W.H. Auden (2016). “Canción de cuna y otros poemas”, p.122, DEBOLS!LLO

  17 Copy quote

• Defenceless under the night
  Our world in stupor lies;
  Yet, dotted everywhere,
  Ironic points of light
  Flash out wherever the Just
  Exchange their messages:
  May I, composed like them
  Of Eros and of dust,
  Beleaguered by the same
  Negation and despair,
  Show an affirming flame.

  W. H. Auden

  Lying, Night, Dust

  "September 1, 1939" l. 92 (1939) See George H.W. Bush 3

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• Lay your sleeping head, my love, Human on my faithless arm.

  W. H. Auden

  Sleep, Arms, Faithless

  "Lullaby" l. 1 (1940)

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• Murder is commoner among cooks than among members of any other profession.

  W. H. Auden

  Food, Cooking, Murder

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• The Three Wiseman: The weather has been awful, The countryside is dreary, Marsh, jungle, rock; and echoes mock, Calling our hope unlawful; But a silly song can help along Yours ever and sincerely: At least we know for certain that we are three old sinners, that this journey is much too long, that we want our dinners, and miss our wives, our books, our dogs, but have only the vaguest idea why we are what we are. To discover how to be human now Is the reason we follow this star.

  W. H. Auden

  Dog, Song, Stars

  4 Copy quote

• One rational voice is dumb: over a grave
  The household of Impulse mourns one dearly loved.
  Sad is Eros, builder of cities,
  And weeping anarchic Aphrodite.

  W. H. Auden

  Death, Cities, Voice

  "In Memory of Sigmund Freud" l. 109 (1939)

  34 Copy quote

• Soft as the earth is mankind and both need to be altered.

  W. H. Auden

  Needs, Earth, Mankind

  W.H. Auden (2016). “Canción de cuna y otros poemas”, p.258, DEBOLS!LLO

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• Clear, unscaleable ahead, Rise the mountains of instead From whose cold, cascading streams None may drink except in dreams

  W. H. Auden

  Dream, Mountain, May

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• 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.

  W. H. Auden

  Choices, Police, Citizens

  Another Time (1940) "September 1, 1939"

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• When one looks into the window of a store which sells devotional art objects, one can't help wishing the iconoclasts had won.

  W. H. Auden

  Art, Wish, Looks

  "The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays" by W. H. Auden, ("Postscript: Christianity & Art"), (p. 461), 1962.

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• Encased in talent like a uniform, The rank of every poet is well known; They can amaze us like a thunderstorm, Or die so young, or live for years alone.

  W. H. Auden

  Years, Uniforms, Talent

  1940 'The Novelist'.

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• How happy is 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. No cashier writes a letter to the press complaining about the incomprehensibility of Modern Mathematics and comparing it unfavorably with the good old days when mathematicians were content to paper irregularly shaped rooms and fill bathtubs without closing the waste pipe.

  W. H. Auden

  Writing, Winning, Paper

  66 Copy quote

• The friends who met here and embraced are gone, Each to his own mistake.

  W. H. Auden

  Mistake, Gone, Mets

  4 Copy quote

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