Auden Quotes: top 100 famous quotes about Auden

Auden Quotes & Sayings

Happy to read and share the best inspirational Auden quotes, sayings and quotations on Wise Famous Quotes.

If we really want to live, we'd better start at once to try. — W. H. Auden

T. S. Eliot told Auden tht the reason he played patience night after night was that it was the nearest thing to being dead. — Howard Jacobson

August for the people and their favourite islands. Daily the steamers sidle up to meet The effusive welcome of the pier. — W. H. Auden

With the farming of a verse
Make a vineyard of the curse — W. H. Auden

Without communication with the dead, a fully human life is not possible. — W. H. Auden

I'm always amazed at the American practice of allowing one party to a homosexual act to remain passive
it's so undemocratic. Sexmust be mutual. — W. H. Auden

Money cannot buy the fuel of love but is excellent kindling. — W. H. Auden

Recipe for the upbringing of a poet: 'As much neurosis as the child can bear. — W. H. Auden

If there are any souls in hell, it is because that is where they insist on being. — W. H. Auden

Soft as the earth is mankind and both need to be altered. — W. H. Auden

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

I don't think Auden liked my poetry very much, he's very Anglican. — Stevie Smith

As writing is one of the desperate professions, it has universal appeal, especially for those not engaged in it. — W. H. Auden

Harrow the house of the dead; look shining at New styles of architecture, a change of heart. — W. H. Auden

No being can make another one happy. — W. H. Auden

It is nonsense to speak of 'higher' and 'lower' pleasures. To a hungry man it is, rightly, more important that he eat than that he philosophize. — W. H. Auden

The theater has never been any good since the actors became gentlemen. — W. H. Auden

One way or another, all the poets of the thirties and forties reacted to Auden, either by rejecting him or trying to absorb him. — Clive James

It takes little talent to see what lies under one's nose, a good deal to know in what direction to point that organ. — W. H. Auden

Music is the best means we have of digesting time. — W. H. Auden

What answer to the meaning of existence should one require beyond the right to exercise one's gifts? — W. H. Auden

Men will pay large sums to whores for telling them they are not bores. — W. H. Auden

Out on the lawn I lie in bed, Vega conspicuous overhead. — W. H. Auden

Criticism should be a casual conversation. — W. H. Auden

Earth, receive an honored guest; William Yeats is laid to rest. Let the Irish vessel lie Emptied of its poetry. — W. H. Auden

I'll love you till the ocean Is folded and hung up to dry And the seven stars go squawking Like geese about the sky. — W. H. Auden

A poet must never make a statement simply because it is sounds poetically exciting; he must also believe it to be true. — W. H. Auden

All I have is a voice. — W. H. Auden

You must go to bed with friends or whores, where money makes up the difference in beauty or desire. — W. H. Auden

Time and fevers burn away
Individual beauty from
Thoughtful children, and the grave
Proves the child ephemeral — W. H. Auden

Doom is dark and deeper than any sea-dingle. — W. H. Auden

Shall memory restore The steps and the shore, The face and the meeting place; — W. H. Auden

To choose what is difficult all one's days, as if it were easy, that is faith — W. H. Auden

The relation of faith between subject and object is unique in every case. Hundreds may believe, but each has to believe by himself. — W. H. Auden

The slogan of Hell: Eat or be eaten. The slogan of Heaven: Eat and be eaten. — W. H. Auden

Had Greek civilization never existed ... we would never have become fully conscious. — W. H. Auden

You owe it to all of us all get on with what you're good at. — W. H. Auden

There's always another story. There's more than meets the eye. — W. H. Auden

All good art is in the nature of a letter written to amuse a sick friend. Too much art, particularly in our time, is only a letter written to oneself. — W. H. Auden

No good opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible. — W. H. Auden

Adjectives are the potbelly of poetry. — W. H. Auden

Some books are undeservedly forgotten; none are undeservedly remembered. — W. H. Auden

Dance till the stars come down from the rafters
Dance, Dance, Dance 'till you drop. — W. H. Auden

I would destroy the entire village if doing so meant keeping you safe. — Auden Johnson

Though one cannot always Remember exactly why one has been happy, There is no forgetting that one was. — W. H. Auden

No person can be a great leader unless he takes genuine joy in the successes of those under him. — W. H. Auden

Weep for the lives your wishes never led. — W. H. Auden

Private faces in public places Are wiser and nicer Than public faces in private places. — W. H. Auden

The identification of fantasy is always an attempt to avoid one's own suffering: the identification of art is the sharing in the suffering of another. — W. H. Auden

Art is born of humiliation. — W. H. Auden

Fate succombs many a species. One alone jeopardizes itself. — W. H. Auden

In headaches and in worry
Vaguely life leaks away,
And Time will have his fancy
To-morrow or today. — W. H. Auden

As a rule, it was the pleasure-haters who became unjust. — W. H. Auden

Dance, dance, dance till you drop. — W. H. Auden

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

We all have these places where shy humiliations gambol on sunny afternoons. — W. H. Auden

He still loves life
But O O O O how he wishes
The good Lord would take him. — W. H. Auden

Nobody is ever sent to Hell: he or she insists on going there. — W. H. Auden

Without art, we should have no notion of the sacred; without science, we should always worship false gods. — W. H. Auden

Acts of injustice done Between the setting and the rising sun In history lie like bones, each one. — W. H. Auden

Most people enjoy the sight of their own handwriting as they enjoy the smell of their own farts. — W. H. Auden

Human "nature" is a nature continually in quest of itself, obliged at every moment to transcend what it was a moment before. — W. H. Auden

I will love you forever" swears the poet. I find this easy to swear too. "I will love you at 4:15 pm next Tuesday" - Is that still as easy? — W. H. Auden

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

There is no love;
There are only the various envies, all of them sad. — W. H. Auden

Happy the hare at morning, for she cannot read The hunter's waking thoughts. — W. H. Auden

Thoughts on his own death, like the distant roll of thunder at a picnic. — W. H. Auden

Enormous novels by co-eds.
Rain down on our defenceless heads. Till our teeth chatter. — W. H. Auden

Auden is a poet - no, the poet - of unembarrassed intellect. Ideas are his emotions, emotions are his ideas. — Cynthia Ozick

A verbal art like poetry is reflective; it stops to think. Music is immediate, it goes on to become. — W. H. Auden

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

Between friends differences in taste or opinion are irritating in direct proportion to their triviality. — W. H. Auden

The mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day. — W. H. Auden

Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can: all of them make me laugh. — W. H. Auden

I may want to sleep with Miss America, but I have no wish to hear her talk about herself and her family. — W. H. Auden

One of the troubles of our times is that we are all, I think, precocious as personalities and backward as characters. — W. H. Auden

The chances are that, in the course of his lifetime, the major poet will write more bad poems than the minor, simply because major poets write a lot. — W. H. Auden

Fate succumbs many a species: one alone jeopardises itself. - W. H. AUDEN, — Mitch Albom

Poetry might be defined as the clear expression of mixed feelings. — W. H. Auden

Blessed be all metrical rules that forbid automatic responses, force us to have second thoughts, free us from the fetters of Self. — W. H. Auden

The sky is darkening like a stain Something is going to fall like rain And it won't be flowers — W. H. Auden

Oh dear white children, casual as birds,
Playing among the ruined languages,
So small beside their large confusing words. — W. H. Auden

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

Caesar's double-bed is warm
As an unimportant clerk
Writes i do not like my work
On a pink official form. — W. H. Auden

Thousands have lived without love, not one without water. — W. H. Auden

Thank God for books as an alternative to conversation. — W. H. Auden

You know there are no secrets in America. It's quite different in England, where people think of a secret as a shared relation between two people. — W. H. Auden

Truth, like love and sleep, resents approaches that are too intense. — W. H. Auden

As the ocean tugged me at my feet, i realized that Early Auden, that strangest of boys, had saved me from being swept away. — Clare Vanderpool

Words are for those with promises to keep. — W. H. Auden

Language is the mother, not the handmaiden, of thought; words will tell you things you never thought or felt before. — W. H. Auden

The way to read a fairy tale is to throw yourself in. — W. H. Auden

Few people take an interest in Iceland, but in those few the interest is passionate. — W. H. Auden

All we are not stares back at what we are. — W. H. Auden

I used to try and concentrate the poem so much that there wasn't a word that wasn't essential. This leads to becoming boring and constipated. — W. H. Auden

I'll love you, dear, I'll love you till China and Africa meet and the river jumps over the mountain and the salmon sing in the street. — W. H. Auden

The stars are not wanted now, put out every one Pack up the moon & dismantle the sun. — W. H. Auden

An unmanly sort of man whose love life seems to have been largely confined to crying in laps and playing mouse. — W. H. Auden

The center that I cannot find is known to my unconscious mind. — W. H. Auden

Every autobiography is concerned with two characters, a Don Quixote, the Ego, and a Sancho Panza, the Self. — W. H. Auden