W. H. Auden Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• Poetry might be defined as the clear expression of mixed feelings.

  W. H. Auden

  Expression, Feelings, Might

  27 Copy quote

• See without looking, hear without listening, breathe without asking.

  W. H. Auden

  Philosophical, Listening, Asking

  W. H. Auden (2013). “For the Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio”, p.23, Princeton University Press

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• Whatever you do, good or bad, people will always have something negative to say

  W. H. Auden

  People, Negative, Bad People

  52 Copy quote

• I think the first prerequisite to civilization is an ability to make polite conversation.

  W. H. Auden

  Thinking, Civilization, Firsts

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• Those who hate to go to bed fear death; those who hate to get up fear life.

  W. H. Auden

  Hate, Bed, Get Up

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• Geniuses are the luckiest of mortals because what they must do is the same as what they most want to do.

  W. H. Auden

  Inspirational, Genius, Want

  In Dag Hammarskj"ld Markings (1964) foreword

  39 Copy quote

• Thank God for books as an alternative to conversation.

  W. H. Auden

  Book, Thank God, Alternatives

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• The eye likes novelty, but the ear craves familiarity.

  W. H. Auden

  Eye, Ears, Likes

  16 Copy quote

• If we really want to live, we'd better start at once to try.

  W. H. Auden

  Success, Trying, Want

  6 Copy quote

• The lights must never go out,
  The music must always play

  W. H. Auden

  Light, Play

  W.H. Auden (2016). “Canción de cuna y otros poemas”, p.159, DEBOLS!LLO

  18 Copy quote

• Words are for those with promises to keep.

  W. H. Auden

  Promise

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• We do not change as we grow up. The difference between the child and the adult is that the former doesn't know who he is and the latter does.

  W. H. Auden

  Children, Growing Up, Learning

  28 Copy quote

• Music is the best means we have of digesting time.

  W. H. Auden

  Music, Art, Philosophy

  Quoted in Robert Craft Stravinsky: Chronicle of a Friendship (1972).

  48 Copy quote

• Every man carries with him through life a mirror, as unique and impossible to get rid of as his shadow.

  W. H. Auden

  Unique, Men, Mirrors

  28 Copy quote

• Human beings are, necessarily, actors who...can be divided...into the sane who know they are acting and the mad who do not.

  W. H. Auden

  Mad, Acting, Actors

  4 Copy quote

• Money cannot buy the fuel of love but is excellent kindling.

  W. H. Auden

  Love, Fuel, Excellent

  24 Copy quote

• The masculine imagination lives in a state of perpetual revolt against the limitations of human life. In theological terms, one might say that all men, left to themselves, become gnostics. They may swagger like peacocks, but in their heart of hearts they all think sex an indignity and wish they could beget themselves on themselves. Hence the aggressive hostility toward women so manifest in most club-car stories.

  W. H. Auden

  Sex, Heart, Men

  32 Copy quote

• You need not see what someone is doing to know if it is his vocation, you have only to watch his eyes: a cook mixing a sauce, a surgeon making a primary incision, a clerk completing a bill of lading wear the same rapt expression, forgetting themselves in a function. How beautiful it is, that eye-on-the-obje ct look.

  W. H. Auden

  Beautiful, Eye, Expression

  4 Copy quote

• A dead man who never caused others to die seldom rates a statue.

  W. H. Auden

  Men, Dead Man, Rate

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• In times of joy, all of us wished we possessed a tail we could wag.

  W. H. Auden

  Dog, Joy, Tails

  39 Copy quote

• A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.

  W. H. Auden

  Love, Passion, Language Words

  "Poets at Work" by W. H. Auden, (p. 170), 1948.

  24 Copy quote

• I smell blood and an era of prominent madmen.

  W. H. Auden

  Blood, Smell, Eras

  11 Copy quote

• The poet marries the language, and out of this marriage the poem is born.

  W. H. Auden

  Language, Poet, Born

  4 Copy quote

• A professor is someone who talks in someone else's sleep.

  W. H. Auden

  Inspirational, Graduation, Education

  46 Copy quote

• Young people, who are still uncertain of their identity, often try on a succession of masks in the hope of finding the one which suits them - the one, in fact, which is not a mask.

  W. H. Auden

  Finding The One, People, Trying

  "Forewords and Afterwords" by W. H. Auden, ("One of the Family"), (p. 369), 1973.

  60 Copy quote

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