Auden's Quotes: top 100 famous quotes about Auden's

Auden's Quotes & Sayings

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

The Auden/Kallman relationship had this to be said for it: It affirmed that it's better to be blatant than latent. — Christopher Hitchens

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

There are not many English novels which deserve to be called great: Parade's End is one of them. — 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

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

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

In the end, art is small beer. The really serious things are earning one's living so as not to be a parasite and loving one's neighbor. — W. H. Auden

For time is inches
And the heart's changes,
Where ghost has haunted
Lost and wanted. — W. H. Auden

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

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

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

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

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

It's usually the stupid people that develop long illnesses. You need more than indolence and selfishness, you need endurance to make a good patient. — W. H. Auden

In short, it became possible - never easy, but possible - in the poet Auden's phrase to find the mortal world enough. — Stephen Greenblatt

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

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

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

Weep for the lives your wishes never led. — 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

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

Over the tea-cups and in the square the tongue has its desire; Still waters run deep, my dear, there's never smoke without fire. — W. H. Auden

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

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

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

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

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

We till shadowed days are done,
We must weep and sing
Duty's conscious wrong,
The Devil in the clock — W. H. Auden

The winds must come from somewhere when they blow ... There must be reasons why the leaves decay.
(From Auden's If I Could Tell You — Alexander McCall Smith

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

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

In a game, just losing is almost as satisfying as just winning ... In life the loser's score is always zero. — 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

Now the leaves are falling fast, Nurse's flowers will not last, Nurses to their graves are gone, But the prams go rolling on. — W. H. Auden

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

A poet's hope: to be, like some valley cheese, local, but prized elsewhere. — W. H. Auden

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

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

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 mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day. — 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

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

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

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

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

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

All we are not stares back at what we are. — 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

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

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

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

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

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 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

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

Thank God for books as an alternative to conversation. — 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

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

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