W. H. Auden Quotes - Page 5

Quotes about:

• Sincerity is technique.

  W. H. Auden

  Technique, Crafts, Sincerity

  18 Copy quote

• Choice of attention - to pay attention to this and ignore that - is to the inner life what choice of action is to the outer. In both cases, a man is responsible for his choice and must accept the consequences, whatever they may be.

  W. H. Auden

  Men, Choices, Attention

  13 Copy quote

• A poet is a professional maker of verbal objects.

  W. H. Auden

  Poetic, Poet, Makers

  9 Copy quote

• Men will pay large sums to whores for telling them they are not bores.

  W. H. Auden

  Men, Pay, Bores

  12 Copy quote

• Dance till the stars come down from the rafters
  Dance, Dance, Dance 'till you drop.

  W. H. Auden

  Inspirational, Dance, Stars

  W.H. Auden (2016). “Canción de cuna y otros poemas”, p.106, DEBOLS!LLO

  68 Copy quote

• What we have not named as a symbol escapes our notice.

  W. H. Auden

  Symbols

  12 Copy quote

• Routine, in an intelligent man, is a sign of ambition.

  W. H. Auden

  Ambition, Intelligent, Men

  "The Good Order" by David Brooks, www.nytimes.com. September 25, 2014.

  13 Copy quote

• Art is our chief means of breaking bread with the dead.

  W. H. Auden

  Art, Mean, Breaking Silence

  12 Copy quote

• The definition of prayer is paying careful and concentrated attention to something other than your own constructions.

  W. H. Auden

  Prayer, Attention, Definitions

  19 Copy quote

• Criticism should be a casual conversation.

  W. H. Auden

  Criticism, Should, Conversation

  10 Copy quote

• Weep for the lives your wishes never led.

  W. H. Auden

  Life, Hope, Wish

  6 Copy quote

• Laziness acknowledges the relation of the present to the past but ignores its relation to the future; impatience acknowledge its relation to the future but ignores its relation to the past; neither the lazy nor the impatient man, that is, accepts the present instant in its full reality and so cannot love his neighbour completely.

  W. H. Auden

  Past, Reality, Men

  7 Copy quote

• Political history is far too criminal to be a fit subject of study for the young. Children should acquire their heroes and villians from fiction.

  W. H. Auden

  Children, Hero, History

  12 Copy quote

• Every poet has his dream reader: mine keeps a look out for curious prosodic fauna like bacchics and choriambs.

  W. H. Auden

  Dream, Looks, Poet

  4 Copy quote

• Genealogies are admirable things, provided they do not encourage the curious delusion that some families are older than others.

  W. H. Auden

  Curious, Genealogy, Delusion

  "Forewords and Afterwords" by W. H. Auden, ("As It Seemed to Us"), (p. 498), 1973.

  7 Copy quote

• Look if you like, but you will have to leap.

  W. H. Auden

  Looks, Crafts, Leap

  4 Copy quote

• Learn from your dreams what you lack.

  W. H. Auden

  Dream, Your Dreams

  15 Copy quote

• Water is the soul of the Earth.

  W. H. Auden

  Water, Soul, Earth

  232 Copy quote

• The nightingales are sobbing in The orchards of our mothers, And hearts that we broke long ago Have long been breaking others; Tears are round, the sea is deep: Roll them overboard and sleep.

  W. H. Auden

  Mother, Heart, Sleep

  16 Copy quote

• I and the public know What all schoolchildren learn, Those to whom evil is done Do evil in return.

  W. H. Auden

  Learning, Israel, Evil

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

  9 Copy quote

• The image of myself which I try to create in my own mind in order that I may love myself is very different from the image which I try to create in the minds of others in order that they may love me.

  W. H. Auden

  Love, Order, Mind

  Dyer's Hand (1963) "Hic et Ille"

  9 Copy quote

• No human being is innocent, but there is a class of innocent human actions called Games.

  W. H. Auden

  Playing Games, Class, Innocence

  31 Copy quote

• Most poetry is the utterance of a man in some state of passion, love, joy, grief, rage, etc., and no doubt this is as it should be. But no man is perpetually in a passion and those states in which he is amused and amusing, detached and irreverent, if less important, are no less amusing. If there were no poets who, like Byron, express these states, Poetry would lack something.

  W. H. Auden

  Grief, Passion, Men

  6 Copy quote

• Christ did not enchant men; He demanded that they believe in Him: except on one occasion, the Transfiguration. For a brief while, Peter, James, and John were permitted to see Him in His glory. For that brief while they had no need of faith. The vision vanished, and the memory of it did not prevent them from all forsaking Him when He was arrested, or Peter from denying that he had ever known Him.

  W. H. Auden

  Memories, Believe, Men

  31 Copy quote

• To read is to translate, for no two persons' experiences are the same. A bad reader is like a bad translator: he interprets literally when he ought to paraphrase and paraphrases when he ought to interpret literally.

  W. H. Auden

  Two, Translate, Reader

  8 Copy quote

Page 5 of 18

First

← Prev

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

Next →

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin