Wh Auden Quotes

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

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

In his entire output, I can find only one piece of genuine unfairness: a thuggish attack on the poetry of WH Auden, whom he regarded as a dupe of the Communist Party. But even this was softened in some later essays. The truth is that he disliked Auden's homosexuality, and could not get over his prejudice. But much of the interest of Orwell lies in the fact that he was born prejudiced, so to speak, against Jews and the coloured peoples of the empire, and against the poor and uneducated, and against women and intellectuals - and managed, in a transparent and unique way, to educate himself out of this fog of bigotry (though he never did get over his aversion to 'pansies'). ~ Christopher Hitchens

John and I noticed that whenever we talked about our children Wystan reached for his cats. ~ Thekla Clark

Oh! Apple Wh-wh-white! Hi! Hey. I mean" - his voice lowered - "hey there. ~ Shannon Hale

May it not be that, just as we have to have faith in Him, God has to have faith in us and, considering the history of the human race so far, may it not be that 'faith' is even more difficult for Him than it is for us? ~ W. H. Auden

When I am 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

Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry. ~ W. H. Auden

If age, which is certainly Just as wicked as youth, look any wiser, It is only that youth is still able to believe It will get away with anything, while age Knows only too well that it has got away with nothing. ~ W. H. Auden

Why do you think I am like this?" It didn't really sound like a question; there was no regret, or sorrow, or genuine tinge of curiosity. I didn't think he expected a complex answer in any case, as I'm pretty sure we both knew that a team of neuroscientists and psychologists could work on Mad Dog for a decade and still not have all of the answers. Instead, I removed a sheet of paper from my legal folder and wrote one quatrain from a poem by W.H. Auden: I and the public know What all schoolchildren learn, Those to whom evil is done Do evil in return. He received this carefully and spent a moment looking it over. For the tiniest fraction of a second his face relaxed and his eyes softened and he seemed to shrink into himself as he breathed in. Then it was over, and he turned away from me, a dismissal if I ever saw one. He crumpled up my note angrily and tossed it away onto the floor. It was the last time we ever spoke. ~ Jean Casella

It's impossible to represent a saint [in Art]. It becomes boring. Perhaps because he is, like the Saturday Evening Post people, inthe position of having almost infinitely free will. ~ W. H. Auden

All the literati keep
An imaginary friend. ~ 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

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

I d-duh-don't know wh-why you even b-buh -bother b-buh-because in s-six y-yuh-years y-you're g-guh-going to be j-juh-just l-like - ""Don't say that."Something inside me went cold. "I'm never going to be like him. ~ Joe Schreiber

Poetry is the only art people haven't learned to consume like soup. ~ W. H. Auden

The windiest militant trash Important Persons shout Is not so crude as our wish: What mad Nijinsky wrote About Diaghilev Is true of the normal heart; For the error bred in the bone Of each woman and each man Craves what it cannot have; Not universal love But to be loved alone. ~ W. H. Auden

The death of literature had been exaggerated. Whereas on dating websites, those who like books are usually bracketed into a single category, the broad selections on offer at WH Smith spoke to the diversity of individuals' motives for reading. If there was a conclusion to be drawn from the number of bloodstained covers, however, it was that there was a powerful desire, in a wide cross-section of airline passengers, to be terrified. ~ Alain De Botton

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

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

There is a certain kind of person who is so dominated by the desire to be loved for himself alone that he has constantly to test those around him by tiresome behavior; what he says and does must be admired, not because it is intrinsically admirable, but because it is his remark, his act. Does not this explain a good deal of avant-garde art? ~ W. H. Auden

The most important truths are likely to be those which society at that time least wants to hear. ~ W. H. Auden

To save your world you asked this man to die; would this man, could he see you now, ask why? ~ W. H. Auden

A fairy tale...on the other hand, demands of the reader total surrender; so long as he is in its world, there must be for him no other. ~ W.H. Auden

He who despises himself, nevertheless esteems himself as a self-despiser. (Nietzsche.)
A vain person is always vain about something. He overestimates the importance of some quality or exaggerates the degree to which he possesses it, but the quality has some real importance and he does possess it to some degree. The fantasy of overestimation or exaggeration makes the vain person comic, but the fact that he cannot be vain about nothing makes his vanity a venial sin, because it is always open to correction by appeal to objective fact.

A proud person, on the other hand, is not proud of anything, he is proud, he exists proudly. Pride is neither comic nor venial, but the most mortal of all sins because, lacking any basis in concrete particulars, it is both incorrigible and absolute: one cannot be more or less proud, only proud or humble.

Thus, if a painter tries to portray the Seven Deadly Sins, his experience will furnish him readily enough with images symbolic of Gluttony, Lust, Sloth, Anger, Avarice, and Envy, for all these are qualities of a person's relations to others and the world, but no experience can provide an image of Pride, for the relation it qualifies is the subjective relation of a person to himself. In the seventh frame, therefore, the painter can only place, in lieu of a canvas, a mirror. ~ W.H. Auden

Look, rodent." At least she could still talk.. "Either chop off my ears so I'm not subjected to your verbal projectiles or clench your back passage so you'd stop dumping toxic waste. ~ Auden Johnson

Osaka: Ah got a question sensei...

Ms Yukari Tanizaki: Wh-what?

Osaka: It true they wear shoes in the house in America?

Tanikaze: That's what I hear.

Osaka: But then...

...wh-what if you stepped in dog poo outside... ... And you never noticed? And then... ~ Kiyohiko Azuma

In any first-class work of art, you can find passages that in themselves are extremely boring, but try to cut them out, as they are in an abridged edition, and you lose the life of the work. Don't think that art that is alive can remain on the same level of interest throughout - and the same is true of life. ~ W. H. Auden

Her gaze wavered towards one of the books on the sales counter beside the register, a hardcover copy of Shakespeare's Hamlet with many of the pages dog-eared and stained with coffee and tea. The store owner caught her looking at it and slid it across the counter towards her. "You ever read Hamlet?" he questioned.

"I tried to when I was in high school," said Mandy, picking up the book and flipping it over to read the back. "I mean, it's expected that everyone should like Shakespeare's books and plays, but I just…." her words faltered when she noticed him laughing to himself. "What's so funny, Sir?" she added, slightly offended.

"…Oh, I'm not laughing at you, just with you," said the store owner. "Most people who say they love Shakespeare only pretend to love his work. You're honest Ma'am, that's all. You see, the reason you and so many others are put-off by reading Shakespeare is because reading his words on paper, and seeing his words in action, in a play as they were meant to be seen, are two separate things… and if you can find a way to relate his plays to yourself, you'll enjoy them so much more because you'll feel connected to them. Take Hamlet for example – Hamlet himself is grieving over a loss in his life, and everyone is telling him to move on but no matter how hard he tries to, in the end all he can do is to get even with the ones who betrayed him."

"…Wow, when you put it that way… sure, I think I'll buy a copy just to try reading, wh ~ Rebecca McNutt

There must always be two kinds of art: escape-art, for man needs escape as he needs food and deep sleep, and parable-art, that art which shall teach man to unlearn hatred and learn love. ~ 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

History marches to the drum of a clear idea. ~ W. H. Auden

Another yap shook the room. Broken branches tumbled to the floor. "Wh-what's up there?" I asked, my knees shaking. I thought about the Norns' prophecy, naming me a harbinger of evil. "Is it - the Wolf?" "Oh, much worse," Blitzen said. "It's the Squirrel. ~ Rick Riordan

Aside from purely technical analysis, nothing can be said about music, except when it is bad; when it is good, one can only listen and be grateful. ~ W. H. Auden

There was still gold and silver in the mountains,
And hunger was a more immediate sorrow ~ W. H. Auden

Wh-wh-what's hap-pening t-t-to me?" Dak said.
"Oh," Sera said softly. "You've just had a Remnant. ~ Jennifer A. Nielsen

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

The last line of Hawaii's Story by Hawaii's Queen is addressed to the American people and their congressmen. "As they deal with me and my people, kindly, generously, and justly, so may the Great Ruler of all nations deal with the grand and glorious nation of the United States of America." It's clever to imply that if the U.S. swallows up her little country, God will smite it. As I reread the last sentance of a book written by a Hawaiian queen wh was taught to read and write by American missionaries, her final thought seems emblematic of how hierarchical Hawaiians adapted to Christianity. Jehovah, "the Great Ruler of all nations," is the highest high chief in the universe. ~ Sarah Vowell

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

Fairy tales are about trouble, about getting into and out of it, and trouble seems to be a necessary stage on the route to becoming. All the magic and glass mountains and pearls the size of houses and princesses beautiful as the day and talking birds and part-time serpents are distractions from the core of most of the stories, the struggle to survive against adversaries, to find your place in the world, and to come into your own.

Fairy tales are almost always the stories of the powerless, of youngest sons, abandoned children, orphans, of humans transformed into birds and beasts or otherwise enchanted away from their own lives and selves. Even princesses are chattels to be disowned by fathers, punished by step-mothers, or claimed by princes, though they often assert themselves in between and are rarely as passive as the cartoon versions. Fairy tales are children's stories not in wh they were made for but in their focus on the early stages of life, when others have power over you and you have power over no one.

In them, power is rarely the right tool for survival anyway. Rather the powerless thrive on alliances, often in the form of reciprocated acts of kindness -- from beehives that were not raided, birds that were not killed but set free or fed, old women who were saluted with respect. Kindness sewn among the meek is harvested in crisis...

In Hans Christian Andersen's retelling of the old Nordic tale that begins with a stepmother, "The Wild Sw ~ Rebecca Solnit

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

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