W. H. Auden Quotes - Page 16

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

  W. H. Auden

  Angle

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

  W. H. Auden

  Food, Cooking, Murder

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• The countenances of children, like those of animals, are masks, not faces, for they have not yet developed a significant profile of their own.

  W. H. Auden

  Children, Animal, Faces

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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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• 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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• 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

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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

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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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• 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

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• 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.

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

  W. H. Auden

  Mistake, Gone, Mets

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• Over the tea-cups and in the square the tongue has its desire; Still waters run deep, my dear, there's never smoke without fire.

  W. H. Auden

  Running, Fire, Squares

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• Poetry makes nothing happen.

  W. H. Auden

  Poet, Happens

  "In Memory of W. B. Yeats" l. 36 (1940) See Auden 39; Andrew Fletcher 1; Samuel Johnson 22; Percy Shelley 15; Twain 104

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

  W. H. Auden

  Art, Stories, Detectives

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

  W. H. Auden

  Poetry, Professors, Poetry Is

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