W. H. Auden Quotes - Page 8

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• And none will hear the postman’s knock Without a quickening of the heart. For who can bear to feel himself forgotten?

  W. H. Auden

  Heart, Bears, Forgotten

  1936 'Night Mail', written to accompany a documentary by the Post Office Film Unit.

  31 Copy quote

• The truly tragic kind of suffering is the kind produced and defiantly insisted upon by the hero himself so that, instead of making him better, it makes him worse and when he dies he is not reconciled to the law but defiant, that is, damned. Lear is not a tragic hero, Othello is.

  W. H. Auden

  Hero, Law, Suffering

  "Forewords and Afterwords" by W. H. Auden, ("The Greeks and Us"), (p. 21), 1973.

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• God is Love, we are taught as children to believe. But when we first begin to get some inkling of how He loves us, we are repelled; it seems so cold, indeed, not love at all as we understand the word.

  W. H. Auden

  Love, God, Children

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• Why doesn't the United States take over the monarchy and unite with England? England does have important assets. Naturally the longer you wait, the more they will dwindle. At least you could use it for a summer resort instead of Maine.

  W. H. Auden

  Summer, Waiting, Important

  23 Copy quote

• In addition to English, at least one ancient language, probably Greek or Hebrew, and two modern languages would be required.

  W. H. Auden

  Two, Greek, Would Be

  8 Copy quote

• No good opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible.

  W. H. Auden

  Funny, Music, People

  Quoted in Time, 29 Dec 1961.

  70 Copy quote

• Get up very early and get going at once. In fact, work first and wash afterwards.

  W. H. Auden

  Firsts, Facts, Get Up

  6 Copy quote

• One cannot walk through an assembly factory and not feel that one is in Hell.

  W. H. Auden

  Hell, Assembly, Factories

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• The ideal audience the poet imagines consists of the beautiful who go to bed with him, the powerful who invite him to dinner and tell him secrets of state, and his fellow-poets. The actual audience he gets consists of myopic schoolteachers, pimply young men who eat in cafeterias, and his fellow-poets. This means, in fact, he writes for his fellow-poets.

  W. H. Auden

  Beautiful, Powerful, Writing

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• To discover how to be human now is the reason we follow this star.

  W. H. Auden

  Stars, Reason, Humans

  W. H. Auden (2013). “For the Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio”, p.28, Princeton University Press

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• A poem is a verbal artifact which must be as skillfully
  and solidly constructed as a table or a motorcycle.

  W. H. Auden

  Motorcycle, Tables, Artifacts

  5 Copy quote

• A poet can write about a man slaying a dragon, but not about a man pushing a button that releases a bomb.

  W. H. Auden

  Writing, Men, Dragons

  "Best Quotes of '54, '55, '56". Book edited by James Beasley Simpson, 1957.

  53 Copy quote

• The element of craftsmanship in poetry is obscured by the fact that all men are taught to speak and most to read and write, while very few men are taught to draw or paint or write music.

  W. H. Auden

  Writing, Men, Taught

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• Some books are undeservedly forgotten; none are undeservedly remembered.

  W. H. Auden

  Book, Beer, Quality

  The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays pt. 1 (1962)

  14 Copy quote

• The true men of action in our time those who transform the world are not the politicians and statesmen but the scientists. Unfortunately poetry cannot celebrate them because their deeds are concerned with things, not persons, and are therefore speechless. When I find myself in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a drawing room full of dukes.

  W. H. Auden

  Art, Mistake, Science

  Dyer's Hand (1963) "The Poet and the City"

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• As a poet, there is only one political duty, and that is to defend one's language from corruption.

  W. H. Auden

  Political, Language, Corruption

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• Recipe for the upbringing of a poet: 'As much neurosis as the child can bear.

  W. H. Auden

  Children, Recipes, Neurosis

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• Every autobiography is concerned with two characters, a Don Quixote, the Ego, and a Sancho Panza, the Self.

  W. H. Auden

  Character, Self, Two

  "The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays" by W. H. Auden, ("Hic et Ille"), (p. 96), 1962.

  8 Copy quote

• We who must die demand a miracle.
  How could the Eternal do a temporal act,
  The Infinite become a finite fact?
  Nothing can save us that is possible:
  We who must die demand a miracle.

  W. H. Auden

  Miracle, Demand, Facts

  W. H. Auden (2013). “For the Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio”, p.8, Princeton University Press

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• Precisely because we do not communicate by singing, a song can be out of place but not out of character; it is just as credible that a stupid person should sing beautifully as that a clever person should do so.

  W. H. Auden

  Song, Clever, Stupid

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• A writer, or at least a poet, is always being asked by people who should know better: “Whom do you write for?” The question is, of course, a silly one, but I can give it a silly answer. Occasionally I come across a book which I feel has been written especially for me and for me only. Like a jealous lover I don’t want anybody else to hear of it. To have a million such readers, unaware of each other’s existence, to be read with passion and never talked about, is the daydream, surely, of every author.

  W. H. Auden

  Silly, Book, Passion

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• It is already possible to imagine a society in which the majority of the population, that is to say, its laborers, will have almost as much leisure as in earlier times was enjoyed by the aristocracy. When one recalls how aristocracies in the past actually behaved, the prospect is not cheerful.

  W. H. Auden

  Past, Cheerful, Majority

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• The most difficult problem in personal knowledge, whether of oneself or of others, is the problem of guessing when to think as a historian and when to think as an anthropologist.

  W. H. Auden

  Thinking, Personal Knowledge, Guessing

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• Health is the state about which medicine has nothing to say.

  W. H. Auden

  Medicine, Medical, States

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• Our sufferings and weaknesses, in so far as they are personal, are of no literary interest whatsoever. They are only interesting in so far as we can see them as typical of the human condition.

  W. H. Auden

  Writing, Interesting, Suffering

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