Auden Quotes

In actual fact, however, the revolt of Ibsen and Shaw against the conventional nineteenth century drama could very well be described as a return to Shakespeare, as an attempt once again to present human beings in their historical and social setting and not, as playwrights since the Restoration had done, either as wholly private or as embodiments of the social manners of a tiny class. Shakespeare's plays, it is true, are not, in the Shavian sense, "dramas of thought," that is to say, not one of his characters is an intellectual: it is true, as Shaw says, that, when stripped of their wonderful diction, the philosophical and moral views expressed by his characters are commonplaces, but the number of people in any generation or society whose thoughts are not commonplace is very small indeed. On the other hand, there is hardly one of his plays which does not provide unending food for thought, if one cares to think about it. ~ W. H. Auden

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

The mass and majesty of this world, all
That carries weight and always weighs the same
Lay in the hands of others; they were small
And could not hope for help and no help came:
What their foes like to do was done, their shame
Was all the worst could wish; they lost their pride
And died as men before their bodies died. ~ W. H. Auden

To hunt for symbols in a fairy tale is absolutely fatal. ~ W. H. Auden

A man is a form of life that dreams in order to act and acts in order to dream. ~ W. H. Auden

One can only blaspheme if one believes. ~ W. H. Auden

All works of art are commissioned in the sense that no artist can create one by a simple act of will but must wait until what he believes to be a good idea for a work comes to him. ~ W. H. Auden

The commonest ivory tower is that of the average man, the state of passivity towards experience. ~ W. H. Auden

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

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

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

A false enchantment can all too easily last a lifetime. ~ W. H. Auden

I met a lot of things on the way that astonished me. Tom Bombadil I knew already; but I had never been to Bree. Strider sitting in the corner at the inn was a shock, and I had no more idea who he was than had Frodo. The Mines of Moria had been a mere name; and of Lothloriene no word had reached my mortal ears till I came there. Far away I knew there were the Horselords on the confines of an ancient Kingdom of Men, but Fanghorn Forest was an unforeseen adventure. I had never heard of the House of Eorl nor of the Stewards of Gondor. Most disquieting of all, Saruman had never been revealed to me, and I was as mystefied as Frodo at Gandalf's failure to appear on September 22.
J.R.R. Tolkien, in a letter to W.H. Auden, June 7, 1955 ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

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

The class distinctions proper to a democratic society are not those of rank or money, still less, as is apt to happen when these are abandoned, of race, but of age. ~ W. H. Auden

Follow, poet, follow right To the bottom of the night, With your unconstraining voice Still persuade us to rejoice; With the farming of a verse Make a vineyard of the curse, Sing of human unsuccess In a rapture of distress; In the deserts of the heart Let the healing fountain start, In the prison of his days Teach the free man how to praise. ~ W. H. Auden

Almost, I thought. Out loud I said, Just because we don't see eye to eye on everything doesn't mean we can't be close.
Auden ~ Sarah Dessen

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

Of course,Behaviourism 'works'. So does torture. ~ 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

Who on earth invented the silly convention that it is boring or impolite to talk shop? Nothing is more interesting to listen to, especially if the shop is not one's own. ~ W. H. Auden

Behind you swiftly the figure comes softly,
The spot on your skin is a shocking disease. ~ W. H. Auden

We are lived by powers we pretend to understand. ~ W. H. Auden

I didn't intend to write about totems or people searching. I tried not to constrain myself, and this is what I ended up with. There's this great Auden quote: "I look at what I write so I can see what I think." ~ Jonathan Safran Foer

Auden? Does he rhyme? I only like poetry that rhymes. All
the best poets write in rhyme."
"Really?"
"Dr. Seuss and Shakespeare. You can't do better than that. ~ Shiela Jane

Instead of Gnostics, we have Existentialists and God-is-dead theologians, instead of Neo-Platonists, devotees of Zen, instead of desert hermits, heroin addicts and Beats (who also, oddly enough, seem averse to washing), instead of mortification of the flesh, sado-masochistic pornography; as for our public entertainments, the fare offered by television is still a shade less brutal than that provided by the Amphitheatre, but only a shade and may not be so for long. ~ W. H. Auden

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

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

Let all your thinks be thanks. ~ W. H. Auden

The social and political history of Europe would be what it has been if Dante, Shakespeare, Michelangelo, Mozart, et al., had never lived. A poet, qua poet, has only one political duty, namely, in his own writing to set an example of the correct use of his mother tongue which is always being corrupted. When words lose their meaning, physical force takes over. By all means, let a poet, if he wants to, write what is now called an "engagé" poem, so long as he realizes that it is mainly himself who will benefit from it. It will enhance his literary reputation among those who feel the same as he does. ~ W.H. Auden

Each in the cell of himself is almost convinced of his freedom. ~ 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

Time will say nothing but I told you so ... ~ W. H. Auden

Thou shalt not live within thy means
Nor on plain water and raw greens.
If thou must choose
Between the chances, choose the odd;
Read The New Yorker, trust in God;
And take short views. ~ W. H. Auden

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

To my generation no other English poet seemed so perfectly to express the sensibility of a male adolescent. If I do not now turn to him very often, I am eternally grateful to him for the joy he gave me in my youth. ~ W. H. Auden

What do you think of when you think of mourning?' Jenny asks.
The question snaps me back to attention. I answer without really thinking. "I guess 'Funeral Blues' by W.H. Auden. I think it was Auden. I suppose that's not very original.'
'I don't know it.'
'It's a poem.'
'I gathered.'
'I'm just clarifying. It's not a blues album.'
Jenny ignores my swipe at her intelligence.
'Does your response need to be original? Isn't that what poetry is for, for the poet to express something so personal that it ultimately is universal?'
I shrug. Who is Jenny, even new Jenny, to say what poetry is for? Who am I for that matter?
'Why do you thin of that poem in particular?'
"Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, / Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone, / Silence the pianos and with muffled drum / Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.'
I learned the poem in college and it stuck. ~ Steven Rowley

Some thirty inches from my nose
The frontier of my Person goes,
And all the untilled air between
Is private pagus or demesne.
Stranger, unless with bedroom eyes
I beckon you to fraternize,
Beware of rudely crossing it:
I have no gun, but I can spit. ~ W. H. Auden

Between labor and play stands work. A man is a worker if he is personally interested in the job which society pays him to do; whatfrom the point of view of society is necessary labor is from his point of view voluntary play. Whether a job is to be classified as labor or work depends, not on the job itself, but on the tastes of the individual who undertakes it. The difference does not, for example, coincide with the difference between a manual and a mental job; a gardener or a cobbler may be a worker, a bank clerk a laborer. ~ W. H. Auden

'Healing,' Papa would tell me, 'is not a science, but the intuitive art of wooing nature.' ~ W. H. Auden

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

Fashion and snobbery are also valuable as a defense against literary indigestion. Regardless of their quality, it is always better to read a few books carefully than skim through many, and, short of a personal taste which cannot be formed overnight, snobbery is as good a principle of limitation as any other.

I am eternally grateful, for example, to the musical fashion of my youth which prevented me from listening to Italian Opera until I was over thirty, by which age I was capable of really appreciating a world so beautiful and so challenging to my cultural heritage. ~ W.H. Auden

Water is the soul of the Earth. ~ W. H. Auden

All time spent reading is time well-spent. ~ W. H. Auden

Christmas and Easter can be subjects for poetry, but Good Friday, like Auschwitz, cannot. The reality is so horrible it is not surprising that people should have found it a stumbling block to faith. ~ W. H. Auden

Young people, who are still uncertain of their identity, often try on a succession of masks in the hope of finding the one which suits them
the one, in fact, which is not a mask. ~ W. H. Auden

He wanted to know if the master sergeant had read Auden, the twentieth century's most influential Christian poet, "English majors in the army, not many of them, not many of us, am I right, Top." Burnette, nonplussed, wondered if he should mention Eliot or the eccentric religious impulses of JD Salinger, but instead mumbled the only line he could recall from Auden's work, "We must love one another or die." Bingo, said the colonel. Son of a bitch had the wrong conjunction. ~ Bob Shacochis

To me Art's subject is the human clay, / And landscape but a background to a torso; / All Cezanne's apples I would give away / For one small Goya or a Daumier. ~ W. H. Auden

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

I see little hope for a peaceful world until men are excluded from the realm of foreign policy altogether and all decisions concerning international relations are reserved for women, preferably married ones. ~ W. H. Auden

When things are going well, you do have the sense that what you're writing is being fed to you in some way. Auden compared writing a poem to cleaning an old piece of slate until the letters appear. The only way you could reveal your god is perhaps under hypnosis. It's sacred and it's secret, even to the writer. ~ Martin Amis

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

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

Anyone who has a child today should train him to be either a physicist or a ballet dancer. Then he'll escape. ~ W. H. Auden

Sob, heavy world Sob as you spin, Mantled in mist Remote from the happy. ~ W. H. Auden

There are three cardinal rules - don't take somebody else's boyfriend unless you've been specifically invited to do so, don't take a drink without being asked, and keep a scrupulous accounting in financial matters. ~ W. H. Auden

Like everyone else, I have my black list of unfavorite authors and critics, and among intimate friends I sometimes say exactly what I think of them, but I have the feeling that to express my opinions publicly would be in bad taste, that, to people whom one does not know personally, one should speak only of the authors and critics one is fond of. I find reading savage reviews like reading pornography; though I often enjoy them, I feel a bit ashamed of myself for doing so. Still, I must admit that I find Nietzsche's list of his "impracticals" great fun. ~ W. H. Auden

Sometimes a question can hurt more than an answer. ~ Sarah Dessen

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

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

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

History is, strictly speaking, the study of questions; the study of answers belongs to anthropology and sociology. ~ W. H. Auden

Does God judge us by appearances? I Suspect that He does. ~ W. H. Auden

A line came into my mind, something that Hannah Arendt once said about the poet Auden: that life had manifested the heart's invisible furies on his face. ~ John Boyne

Like Pascal, Nietzsche, and Simone Weil, Kierkegaard is one of those writers whom it is very difficult to estimate justly. When one reads them for the first time, one is bowled over by their originality . . . and by the sharpness of their insights. . . . But with successive readings one's doubts grow, one begins to react against their overemphasis on one aspect of the truth at the expense of all the others, and one's first enthusiasm may all too easily turn to an equally exaggerated aversion. Of all such writers, one might say that one cannot imagine them as children. The more we read them, the more we become aware that something has gone badly wrong with their affective life; . . . it is not only impossible to imagine one of them as a happy husband or wife, it is impossible to imagine their having a single intimate friend to whom they could open their hearts. ~ W. H. Auden

Those who will not reason, perish in the act. Those who will not act, perish for that reason. ~ W. H. Auden

All the literati keep
An imaginary friend. ~ W. H. Auden

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

In addition, unlike Othello, whose profession of arms is socially honorable, Shylock is a professional usurer who, like a prostitute, has a social function but is an outcast from the community. But, in the play, he acts unprofessionally; he refuses to charge Antonio interest and insists upon making their legal relation that of debtor and creditor, a relation acknowledged as legal by all societies. Several critics have pointed to analogies between the trial scene and the medieval Processus Belial in which Our Lady defends man against the prosecuting Devil who claims the legal right to man's soul. […] But the differences between Shylock and Belial are as important as their similarities. The comic Devil of the mystery play can appeal to logic, to the letter of the law, but he cannot appeal to the heart or to the imagination, and Shakespeare allows Shylock to do both. In his "Hath not a Jew eyes…" speech in Act III, Scene I, he is permitted to appeal to the sense of human brotherhood, and in the trial scene, he is allowed to argue, with a sly appeal to the fear a merchant class has of radical social evolution:

You have among you many a purchased slave
Which like your asses and your dogs and mules,
You use in abject and in slavish parts,

which points out that those who preach mercy and brotherhood as universal obligations limit them in practice and are prepared to treat certain classes of human beings as things. ~ W.H. Auden

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well That, for all they care, I can go to hell, But on earth indifference is the least We have to dread from man or beast. How should we like it were stars to burn With a passion for us we could not return? If equal affection cannot be, Let the more loving one be me. Admirer as I think I am Of stars that do not give a damn, I cannot, now I see them, say I missed one terribly all day. Were all stars to disappear or die, I should learn to look at an empty sky And feel its total dark sublime, Though this might take me a little time. ~ W. H. Auden

Let me see what I wrote so I know what I think ~ W. H. Auden

The years shall run like rabbits,
For in my arms I hold
The Flower of the Ages,
And the first love of the world. ~ W.H. Auden

Always the following wind of history
Of others' wisdom makes a buoyant air
Till we come suddenly on pockets where
Is nothing loud but us; where voices seem
Abrupt, untrained, competing with no lie
Our fathers shouted once. ~ W. H. Auden

Love requires an Object
But this varies so much
Almost, I imagine
anything will do:
When I was a child I
Loved a pumping engine
Thought it every bit as
Beautiful as you ~ Wystan H. Auden,

O stand, stand at the window
As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbour
With your crooked heart. ~ W. H. Auden

You see, the penis, it's so graceless, wouldn't you agree? When it's cold and shrivelled up, it looks like W.H. Auden in his old age; when it's hot, it flops and dangles about in a ridiculous way; when it's excited, it looks so pained and earnest you'd think it was going to burst into tears. And the scrotum! To think that something so vital to the survival of the species, fully responsible for 50 per cent of the ingredients--though none of the work--should hang freely from the body in a tiny, defenceless bag of skin. One whack, one bite, one paw-scratch--and it's just the right level, too, for your average animal, a dog, a lion, a sabre-tooth tiger--and that's it, end of story. Don't you think it should get better protection? Behind some bone, for example, like us? What could be better than our nicely tapered entrance? It's discreet and stylish, everything is cleverly and compactly encased in the body, with nothing hanging out within easy reach of a closing subway door, there's a neat triangle of hair above it, like a road sign, should you lose your way--it's perfect. The penis is just such a lousy design. It's pre-Scandinavian. Pre-Bauhaus, even. ~ Yann Martel

Behind the corpse in the reservoir, behind the ghost on the links, Behind the lady who dances and the man who madly drinks, Under the look of fatigue, the attack of migraine and the sigh There is always another story, there is more than meets the eye. ~ W. H. Auden

May with its light behaving
Stirs vessel, eye and limb,
The singular and sad
Are willing to recover,
And to each swan-delighting river
The careless picnics come
In living white and red.

Our dead, remote and hooded,
In hollows rest, but we
From their vague woods have broken,
Forests where children meet
And the white angel-vampires flit,
Stand now with shaded eye,
The dangerous apple taken.

The real world lies before us,
Brave motions of the young,
Abundant wish for death,
The pleasing, pleasured, haunted:
A dying Master sinks tormented
In his admirers' ring,
The unjust walk the earth.

And love that makes impatient
Tortoise and roe, that lays
The blonde beside the dark,
Urges upon our blood,
Before the evil and the good
How insufficient is
Touch, endearment, look. ~ W. H. Auden

Cassio is a ladies' man, that is to say, a man who feels most at home in feminine company where his looks and good manners make him popular, but is ill at ease in the company of his own sex because he is unsure of his own masculinity.
[…]
Cassio is a ladies' man, not a seducer. With women of his own class, what he enjoys is socialized eroticism; he would be frightened of a serious personal passion. For physical sex he goes to prostitutes and when, unexpectedly, Bianca falls in love with him, like many of his kind, he behaves like a cad and brags of his conquest to others. ~ W.H. Auden

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

A vice in common can be the ground of a friendship but not a virtue in common. X and Y may be friends because they are both drunkards or womanizers but, if they are both sober and chaste, they are friends for some other reason. ~ W. H. Auden

He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong. ~ W. H. Auden

But round your image
there is no fog, and the Earth
can still astonish. ~ W. H. Auden

We are not commanded (or forbidden) to love our mates, our children, our friends, our country because such affections come naturally to us and are good in themselves, although we may corrupt them. We are commanded to love our neighbor because our natural attitude toward the other is one of either indifference or hostility. ~ W. H. Auden

A poem is a verbal artifact which must be as skillfully
and solidly constructed as a table or a motorcycle. ~ W. H. Auden

Death is the sound of distant thunder at a picnic. ~ 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

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

Almost all of our relationships begin and most of them continue as forms of mutual exploitation, a mental or physical barter, to be terminated when one or both parties run out of goods. ~ W. H. Auden

What living occasion can,
Be just to the absent? ~ W. H. Auden

Man desires to be free and he desires to feel important. This places him in a dilemma, for the more he emancipates himself from necessity the less important he feels. ~ W. H. Auden

Courses in prosody, rhetoric and comparative philology would be required of all students, and every student would have to select three courses out of courses in mathematics, natural history, geology, meteorology, archaeology, mythology, liturgics, cooking. ~ W. H. Auden

Only as I am, can I love you as you are ~ Sheridan Hay Originally From W. H. Auden

Three quarters of these people know
Instinctively what ought to be
The nature of society
And how they'd live there if they could.
If it were easy to be good,
And cheap, and plain as evil, how,
We all would be its members now... ~ W. H. Auden

What the poet says has never been said before, but, once he has said it, his readers recognize its validity for themselves. ~ W. H. Auden

The masculine imagination lives in a state of perpetual revolt against the limitations of human life. In theological terms, one might say that all men, left to themselves, become gnostics. They may swagger like peacocks, but in their heart of hearts they all think sex an indignity and wish they could beget themselves on themselves. Hence the aggressive hostility toward women so manifest in most club-car stories. ~ W. H. Auden

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

Lay your sleeping head, my love, Human on my faithless arm; ~ W. H. Auden

Intellectual disgrace
Stares from every human face,
And the seas of pity lie
Locked and frozen in each eye. ~ W. H. Auden

All wdl be judged. Master of nuance and scruple, Pray for me and for all writers living or dead;
Because there are many whose works
Are in better taste than their lives, because there is no end T o the vanity of our c a h g : make intercession
For the treason of all clerks.
Because the darkness is never so distant,
And there is never much time for the arrogant
Spirit to flutter its wings,
Or the broken bone to rejoice, or the cruel to cry,
For Him whose property is always to have mercy, the author
And giver of all good things.

W.H. Auden, "At the Grave of Henry James ~ W. H. Auden