Auden's Quotes
Collection of top 100 famous quotes about Auden's
Auden's Quotes & Sayings
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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 verseMake a vineyard of the curse — 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
Cats can be very funny, and have the oddest ways of showing they're glad to see you ...
— W. H. Auden
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 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
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 knockWithout 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 awayIndividual 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
In short, it became possible - never easy, but possible - in the poet Auden's phrase to find the mortal world enough.
— Stephen Greenblatt
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
Art is born of humiliation.
— 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
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
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
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
Between friends differences in taste or opinion are irritating in direct proportion to their triviality.
— W. H. Auden
All we are not stares back at what we are.
— W. H. Auden
Caesar's double-bed is warmAs an unimportant clerk
Writes i do not like my work
On a pink official form. — 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
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
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
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
