W. H. Auden Quotes - Page 3

Quotes about:

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

  W. H. Auden

  Inspirational, Graduation, Education

  46 Copy quote

• To be happy means to be free, not from pain or fear, but from care or anxiety.

  W. H. Auden

  Pain, Mean, Anxiety

  15 Copy quote

• Cats can be very funny, and have the oddest ways of showing they're glad to see you.

  W. H. Auden

  Cat, Way, Glad

  22 Copy quote

• Without communication with the dead, a fully human life is not possible.

  W. H. Auden

  Communication, Life Is, Human Life

  8 Copy quote

• To pray is to pay attention to something or someone other than oneself. Whenever a man so concentrates his attention - on a landscape, a poem, a geometrical problem, an idol, or the True God - that he completely forgets his own ego and desires, he is praying. The primary task of the schoolteacher is to teach children, in a secular context, the technique of prayer.

  W. H. Auden

  God, Prayer, Children

  7 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

• All sins tend to be addictive, and the terminal point of addiction is damnation.

  W. H. Auden

  Addiction, Damnation, Sin

  A Certain World (1970) "Hell"

  93 Copy quote

• Fate succumbs many a species: one alone jeopardises itself.

  W. H. Auden

  Life, Fate, Species

  4 Copy quote

• 'Healing,' Papa would tell me, 'is not a science, but the intuitive art of wooing nature.'

  W. H. Auden

  Art, Nature, Get Well

  78 Copy quote

• If age, which is certainly Just as wicked as youth, look any wiser, It is only that youth is still able to believe It will get away with anything, while age Knows only too well that it has got away with nothing.

  W. H. Auden

  Believe, Wicked, Age

  4 Copy quote

• In the deserts of the heart
  Let the healing fountain start.

  W. H. Auden

  Healing, Heart, Relaxation

  Another Time (1940) "In Memory of W. B. Yeats"

  27 Copy quote

• A small grove massacred to the last ash,
  An oak with heart-rot, give away the show:
  This great society is going to smash;
  They cannot fool us with how fast they go,
  How much they cost each other and the gods.
  A culture is no better than its woods.

  W. H. Auden

  Heart, Giving, Environmental

  Shield of Achilles (1955) "Bucolics"

  57 Copy quote

• We are all here on earth to help others.

  W. H. Auden

  Funny Life, Helping Others, Earth

  W H Auden (1981). “Antæus”, Ecco Press

  11 Copy quote

• All wishes, whatever their apparent content, have the same and unvarying meaning: "I refuse to be what I am."

  W. H. Auden

  Wish, Refuse

  "The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays" by W. H. Auden, ("Interlude: West's Disease"), (p. 241), 1962.

  8 Copy quote

• Like everything which is not the involuntary result of fleeting emotion but the creation of time and will, any marriage, happy or unhappy, is infinitely more interesting than any romance, however passionate.

  W. H. Auden

  Marriage, Interesting, Romance

  31 Copy quote

• I don't think the mystical experience can be verbalized. When the ego disappears, so does power over language.

  W. H. Auden

  Thinking, Mystical Experiences, Ego

  "Paris Review", Writers at Work, 4th series, (p. 266), 1972.

  11 Copy quote

• Whatever the field under discussion, those who engage in debate must not only believe in each other's good faith, but also in their capacity to arrive at the truth.

  W. H. Auden

  Believe, Fields, Debate

  "Forewords and Afterwords" by W. H. Auden, ("The Protestant Mystics"), (p. 52), 1973.

  16 Copy quote

• God may reduce you on Judgment Day to tears of shame, reciting by heart the poems you would have written, had your life been good.

  W. H. Auden

  Heart, Tears, May

  14 Copy quote

• Private faces in public places Are wiser and nicer Than public faces in private places.

  W. H. Auden

  Faces, Wiser

  'Orators' (1932) dedication

  5 Copy quote

• In order that people may be happy in their work, these three things are needed: They must be fit for it: they must not do too much of it: and they must have a sense of success in it - not a doubtful sense, such as needs some testimony of others for its confirmation, but a sure sense, or rather knowledge, that so much work has been done well, and fruitfully done, whatever the world may say or think about it.

  W. H. Auden

  Success, Work, Thinking

  41 Copy quote

• Most people enjoy the sight of their own handwriting as they enjoy the smell of their own farts.

  W. H. Auden

  Sight, Smell, People

  23 Copy quote

• The most exciting rhythms seem unexpected and complex, the most beautiful melodies simple and inevitable.

  W. H. Auden

  Music, Beautiful, Simple

  21 Copy quote

• Now is the age of anxiety.

  W. H. Auden

  Birthday, Anxiety, Age

  10 Copy quote

• The primary function of poetry, as of all the arts, is to make us more aware of ourselves and the world around us. I do not know if such increased awareness makes us more moral or more efficient. I hope not. I think it makes us more human, and I am quite certain it makes us more difficult to deceive.

  W. H. Auden

  Art, Thinking, Poetry

  10 Copy quote

• A false enchantment can all too easily last a lifetime.

  W. H. Auden

  Love, Enchantment, Lasts

  9 Copy quote

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