98 Quotes & Sayings By Wh Auden

W. S. Auden (August 21, 1907 – December 27, 1973) was an English poet known for his sophisticated use of poetic meters and his often political essays. He is also considered one of the foremost modern English-language poets in the general vein of poetry known as Modernism, though he rejected the term "modernist" for himself.

We must love one another or die
1
We must love one another or die W.h. Auden
He was my North, my South, my East and West,...
2
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
3
If equal affection cannot be, Let the more loving one be me. W.h. Auden
4
I am sure it is everyone’s experience, as it has been mine, that any discovery we make about ourselves or the meaning of life is never, like a scientific discovery, a coming upon something entirely new and unsuspected; it is rather, the coming to conscious recognition of something, which we really knew all the time but, because we were unwilling to formulate it correctly, we did not hitherto know we knew. W.h. Auden
Truth, like love and sleep, resents approaches that are too...
5
Truth, like love and sleep, resents approaches that are too intense. W.h. Auden
The religious definition of truth is not that it is...
6
The religious definition of truth is not that it is universal but that it is absolute. W.h. Auden
Happy the hare at morning, for she cannot read The...
7
Happy the hare at morning, for she cannot read The hunter's waking thoughts. W.h. Auden
If you want romance, fuck a journalist.
8
If you want romance, fuck a journalist. W.h. Auden
Language is the mother, not the handmaiden, of thought; words...
9
Language is the mother, not the handmaiden, of thought; words will tell you things you never thought or felt before. W.h. Auden
Poetry might be defined as the clear expression of mixed...
10
Poetry might be defined as the clear expression of mixed feelings. W.h. Auden
You shall love your crooked neighbour, with your crooked heart.
11
You shall love your crooked neighbour, with your crooked heart. W.h. Auden
A poet is, before anything else, a person who is...
12
A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language. W.h. Auden
We would rather be ruined than changed We would rather...
13
We would rather be ruined than changed We would rather die in our dread Than climb the cross of the moment And let our illusions die. W.h. Auden
14
SEPTEMBER 1, 1939I sit in one of the dives On Fifty-second StreetUncertain and afraid As the clever hopes expire Of a low dishonest decade: Waves of anger and fear Circulate over the bright And darkened lands of the earth, Obsessing our private lives; The unmentionable odour of death Offends the September night. Accurate scholarship can Unearth the whole offence From Luther until now That has driven a culture mad, Find what occurred at Linz, What huge imago made A psychopathic god: I and the public know What all schoolchildren learn, Those to whom evil is done Do evil in return. Exiled Thucydides knew All that a speech can say About Democracy, And what dictators do, The elderly rubbish they talk To an apathetic grave; Analysed all in his book, The enlightenment driven away, The habit-forming pain, Mismanagement and grief: We must suffer them all again. Into this neutral air Where blind skyscrapers use Their full height to proclaim The strength of Collective Man, Each language pours its vain Competitive excuse: But who can live for long In an euphoric dream; Out of the mirror they stare, Imperialism's face And the international wrong. Faces along the bar Cling to their average day: The lights must never go out, The music must always play, All the conventions conspire To make this fort assume The furniture of home; Lest we should see where we are, Lost in a haunted wood, Children afraid of the night Who have never been happy or good. The windiest militant trash Important Persons shout Is not so crude as our wish: What mad Nijinsky wrote About DiaghilevIs 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. From the conservative dark Into the ethical life The dense commuters come, Repeating their morning vow;' I will be true to the wife, I'll concentrate more on my work, ' And helpless governors wake To resume their compulsory game: Who can release them now, Who can reach the dead, Who can speak for the dumb? All I have is a voice To undo the folded lie, The romantic lie in the brain Of the sensual man-in-the-street And the lie of AuthorityWhose buildings grope the sky: There is no such thing as the StateAnd no one exists alone; Hunger allows no choice To the citizen or the police; We must love one another or die. Defenseless under the night Our world in stupor lies; Yet, dotted everywhere, Ironic points of light Flash out wherever the JustExchange their messages: May I, composed like them Of Eros and of dust, Beleaguered by the same Negation and despair, Show an affirming flame. W.h. Auden
15
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
I will love you forever
16
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
O stand, stand at the window As the tears scald...
17
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
Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.
18
Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry. W.h. Auden
And each in the cell of himself is almost convinced...
19
And each in the cell of himself is almost convinced of his freedom. W.h. Auden
Poetry makes nothing happen.
20
Poetry makes nothing happen. W.h. Auden
All the rest is silence On the other side of...
21
All the rest is silence On the other side of the wall; And the silence ripeness, And the ripeness all. W.h. Auden
Clear, unscalable, ahead Rise the Mountains of Instead, From whose...
22
Clear, unscalable, ahead Rise the Mountains of Instead, From whose cold, cascading streams None may drink except in dreams. W.h. Auden
Say this city has ten million souls, Some are living...
23
Say this city has ten million souls, Some are living in mansions, some are living in holes: Yet there’s no place for us, my dear, yet there’s no place for us. W.h. Auden
24
The Ogre does what ogres can, Deeds quite impossible for Man, But one prize is beyond his reach: The Ogre cannot master speech. About a subjugated plain, Among it's desperate and slain, The Ogre stalks with hands on hips, While drivel gushes from his lips. W.h. Auden
Every poet has his dream reader: mine keeps a look...
25
Every poet has his dream reader: mine keeps a look out for curious prosodic fauna like bacchics and choriambs. W.h. Auden
26
Base words are uttered only by the base And can for such at once be understood; But noble platitudes – ah, there's a case Where the most careful scrutiny is needed To tell a voice that's genuinely good From one that's base but merely has succeeded. W.h. Auden
No poet can know what his poem is going to...
27
No poet can know what his poem is going to be like until he has written it. W.h. Auden
When words lose their meaning, physical force takes over.
28
When words lose their meaning, physical force takes over. W.h. Auden
The element of craftsmanship in poetry is obscured by the...
29
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
30
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
In the prison of his days Teach the free man...
31
In the prison of his days Teach the free man how to praise W.h. Auden
I smell blood and an era of prominent madmen.
32
I smell blood and an era of prominent madmen. W.h. Auden
33
Drama is based on the Mistake. I think someone is my friend when he really is my enemy, that I am free to marry a woman when in fact she is my mother, that this person is a chambermaid when it is a young nobleman in disguise, that this well-dressed young man is rich when he is really a penniless adventurer, or that if I do this such and such a result will follow when in fact it results in something very different. All good drama has two movements, first the making of the mistake, then the discovery that it was a mistake. W.h. Auden
34
In the eyes of others a man is a poet if he has written one good poem. In his own he is only a poet at the moment when he is making his last revision to a new poem. The moment before, he was still only a potential poet; the moment after, he is a man who has ceased to write poetry, perhaps forever. W.h. Auden
35
In the detective story, as in its mirror image, the Quest for the Grail, maps (the ritual of space) and timetables (the ritual of time) are desirable. Nature should reflect its human inhabitants, i.e., it should be the Great Good Place; for the more Eden-like it is, the greater the contradiction of murder. The country is preferable to the town, a well-to-do neighborhood (but not too well-to-do-or there will be a suspicion of ill-gotten gains) better than a slum. The corpse must shock not only because it is a corpse but also because, even for a corpse, it is shockingly out of place, as when a dog makes a mess on a drawing room carpet.", Harper's Magazine, May 1948). W.h. Auden
36
So long as we think of it objectively, time is Fate or Chance, the factor in our lives for which we are not responsible, and about which we can do nothing; but when we begin to think of it subjectively, we feel responsible for our time, and the notion of punctuality arises. W.h. Auden
37
The true men of action in our time those who transform the world are not the politicians and statesmen but the scientists. Unfortunately poetry cannot celebrate them because their deeds are concerned with things, not persons, and are therefore speechless. When I find myself 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
Without art, we should have no notion of the sacred;...
38
Without art, we should have no notion of the sacred; without science, we should always worship false gods. W.h. Auden
There are good books which are only for adults. There...
39
There are good books which are only for adults. There are no good books which are only for children. W.h. Auden
We would rather be ruined than changed. We would rather...
40
We would rather be ruined than changed. We would rather die in our dread than climb the cross of the moment and see our illusions die. W.h. Auden
The friends who met here and embraced are gone, Each...
41
The friends who met here and embraced are gone, Each to his own mistake; W.h. Auden
Small tyrants, threatened by big, sincerely believethey love liberty.
42
Small tyrants, threatened by big, sincerely believethey love liberty. W.h. Auden
43
What is peculiar and novel to our age is that the principal goal of politics in every advanced society is not, strictly speaking, a political one, that is today, it is not concerned with human beings as persons and citizens, but with human bodies.. In all technologically advanced countries today, whatever political label they give themselves, their policies have, essentially, the same goal: to guarantee to every member of society, as a psychophysical organism, the right to physical and mental health. W.h. Auden
44
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
45
Part came from Lane, and part from D.H. Lawrence;Gide, though I didn't know it then, gave part. They taught me to express my deep abhorrence If I caught anyone preferring ArtTo Life and Love and being Pure-in-heart.I lived with crooks but seldom was molested; The Pure-in-heart can never be arrested. W.h. Auden
46
When someone between twenty and forty says, apropos of a work of art, 'I know what I like, ' he is really saying 'I have no taste of my own but accept the taste of my cultural milieu. W.h. Auden
47
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
48
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
49
A child's reading is guided by pleasure, but his pleasure is undifferentiated; he cannot distinguish, for example, between aesthetic pleasure and the pleasures of learning or daydreaming. In adolescence we realize that there are different kinds of pleasure, some of which cannot be enjoyed simultaneously, but we need help from others in defining them. Whether it be a matter of taste in food or taste in literature, the adolescent looks for a mentor in whose authority he can believe. He eats or reads what his mentor recommends and, inevitably, there are occasions when he has to deceive himself a little; he has to pretend that he enjoys olives or War and Peace a little more than he actually does. Between the ages of twenty and forty we are engaged in the process of discovering who we are, which involves learning the difference between accidental limitations which it is our duty to outgrow and the necessary limitations of our nature beyond which we cannot trespass with impunity. Few of us can learn this without making mistakes, without trying to become a little more of a universal man than we are permitted to be. It is during this period that a writer can most easily be led astray by another writer or by some ideology. When someone between twenty and forty says, apropos of a work of art, 'I know what I like, 'he is really saying 'I have no taste of my own but accept the taste of my cultural milieu', because, between twenty and forty, the surest sign that a man has a genuine taste of his own is that he is uncertain of it. After forty, if we have not lost our authentic selves altogether, pleasure can again become what it was when we were children, the proper guide to what we should read. W.h. Auden
50
As readers, we remain in the nursery stage so long as we cannot distinguish between taste and judgment, so long, that is, as the only possible verdicts we can pass on a book are two: this I like; this I don't like. For an adult reader, the possible verdicts are five: I can see this is good and I like it; I can see this is good but I don't like it; I can see this is good and, though at present I don't like it, I believe that with perseverance I shall come to like it; I can see that this is trash but I like it; I can see that this is trash and I don't like it. W.h. Auden
51
To read is to translate, for no two persons' experiences are the same. A bad reader is like a bad translator: he interprets literally when he ought to paraphrase and paraphrases when he ought to interpret literally. W.h. Auden
52
The basic stimulus to the intelligence is doubt, a feeling that the meaning of an experience is not self-evident. W.h. Auden
53
In the nightmare of the dark All the dogs of Europe bark, And the living nations wait, Each sequestered in its hate; Intellectual disgrace Stares from every human face, And the seas of pity lie Locked and frozen in each eye. W.h. Auden
54
To make one, there must be two. W.h. Auden
55
The most exciting rhythms seem unexpected and complex, the most beautiful melodies simple and inevitable. W.h. Auden
56
Murder is unique in that it abolishes the party it injures, so that society must take the place of the victim, and on his behalf demand atonement or grant forgiveness. W.h. Auden
57
Practical jokes are a demonstration that the distinction between seriousness and play is not a law of nature but a social convention which can be broken, and that a man does not always require a serious motive for deceiving another. Two men, dressed as city employees, block off a busy street and start digging it up. The traffic cop, motorists and pedestrians assume that this familiar scene has a practical explanation — a water main or an electric cable is being repaired — and make no attempt to use the street. In fact, however, the two diggers are private citizens in disguise who have no business there. All practical jokes are anti-social acts, but this does not necessarily mean that all practical jokes are immoral. A moral practical joke exposes some flaw of society which is hindrance to a real community or brotherhood. That it should be possible for two private individuals to dig up a street without being stopped is a just criticism of the impersonal life of a large city where most people are strangers to each other, not brothers; in a village where all inhabitants know each other personally, the deception would be impossible. . W.h. Auden
58
What living occasion can, Be just to the absent? W.h. Auden
59
All we are not stares back at what we are. W.h. Auden
60
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
61
To save your world, you asked this man to die: Would this man, could he see you now, asked why? W.h. Auden
62
Every man carries with him through life a mirror, as unique and impossible to get rid of as his shadow. W.h. Auden
63
Laziness acknowledges the relation of the present to the past but ignores its relation to the future; impatience acknowledge its relation to the future but ignores its relation to the past; neither the lazy nor the impatient man, that is, accepts the present instant in its full reality and so cannot love his neighbour completely. W.h. Auden
64
The desires of the heart are as crooked as corkscrews Not to be born is the best for man The second best is a formal order The dance's pattern, dance while you can. Dance, dance, for the figure is easy The tune is catching and will not stop Dance till the stars come down from the rafters Dance, dance, dance till you drop. W.h. Auden
65
The desires of the heart are as crooked as corkscrews. W.h. Auden
66
Moreover, if great men are the only hope of the Evolutionary Process, they are morally bound to rule over the masses for their own good -- we are all here on earth to help others: what on earth the others are here for, I don't know -- and the masses have no right whatsoever to resist them. W.h. Auden
67
No poet or novelist wishes he was the only one who ever lived, but most of them wish they were the only one alive, and quite a number believe their wish has been granted. W.h. Auden
68
Some writers confuse authenticity, which they ought always to aim at, with originality, which they should never bother about. W.h. Auden
69
I know nothing, except what everyone knows - if there when Grace dances, I should dance. W.h. Auden
70
Evil is unspectacular and always human, And shares our bed and eats at our own table .... W.h. Auden
71
The enlightenment driven away, The habit-forming pain, Mismanagement and grief: We must suffer them all again. W.h. Auden
72
And maps can really point to places Where life is evil now: Nanking. Dachau. W.h. Auden
73
My second thoughts condemn And wonder how I dare To look you in the eye. What right have I to swear Even at one a.m. To love you till I die? Earth meets too many crimes For fibs to interest her; If I can give my word, Forgiveness can recur Any number of times In Time. Which is absurd. Tempus fugit. Quite.So finish up your drink. All flesh is grass. It is. But who on earth can think With heavy heart or light Of what will come of this? . W.h. Auden
74
Murder is commoner among cooks than among members of any other profession. W.h. Auden
75
A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us. W.h. Auden
76
The slogan of Hell: Eat or be eaten. The slogan of Heaven: Eat and be eaten. W.h. Auden
77
He who despises himself, nevertheless esteems himself as a self-despiser. (Nietz W.h. Auden
78
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 partners run out of goods. But if the seed of a genuine disinterested love, which is often present, is ever to develop, it is essential that we pretend to ourselves and to others that it is stronger and more developed than it is, that we are less selfish than we are. Hence the social havoc wrought by the paranoid to whom the thought of indifference is so intolerable that he divides others into two classes, those who love him for himself alone and those who hate him for the same reason. Do a paranoid a favor, like paying his hotel bill in a foreign city when his monthly check has not yet arrived, and he will take this as an expression of personal affection — the thought that you might have done it from a general sense of duty towards a fellow countryman in distress will never occur to him. So back he comes for more until your patience is exhausted, there is a row, and he departs convinced that you are his personal enemy. In this he is right to the extent that it is difficult not to hate a person who reveals to you so clearly how little you love others. W.h. Auden
79
I write because I love to play with language. W.h. Auden
80
The More Loving OneLooking 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
81
Every autobiography is concerned with two characters, a Don Quixote, the Ego, and a Sancho Panza, the Self. W.h. Auden
82
Before people complain of the obscurity of modern poetry, they should first examine their consciences and ask themselves with how many people and on how many occasions they have genuinely and profoundly shared some experience with another. W.h. Auden
83
Soft as the earth is mankind and both need to be altered. W.h. Auden
84
As for Iago’s jealousy, one cannot believe that a seriously jealous man could behave towards his wife as Iago behaves towards Emilia, for the wife of a jealous husband is the first person to suffer. Not only is the relation of Iago and Emilia, as we see it on stage, without emotional tension, but also Emilia openly refers to a rumor of her infidelity as something already disposed of. Some such squire it was That turned your wit, the seamy side without And made you to suspect me with the Moor.At one point Iago states that, in order to revenge himself on Othello, he will not rest till he is even with him, wife for wife, but, in the play, no attempt at Desdemona’s seduction is made. Iago does not encourage Cassio to make one, and he even prevents Roderigo from getting anywhere near her. Finally, one who seriously desires personal revenge desires to reveal himself. The revenger’s greatest satisfaction is to be able to tell his victim to his face — "You thought you were all-powerful and untouchable and could injure me with impunity. Now you see that you were wrong. Perhaps you have forgotten what you did; let me have the pleasure of reminding you." When at the end of the play, Othello asks Iago in bewilderment why he has thus ensnared his soul and body, if his real motive were revenge for having been cuckolded or unjustly denied promotion, he could have said so, instead of refusing to explain. W.h. Auden
85
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
86
Drama is based on the Mistake. W.h. Auden
87
We are, for all our polish, of littlestature, and, as human lives, compared with authentic martyrs, of no account. W.h. Auden
88
In accepting and defending the social institution of slavery, the Greeks were harder-hearted than we but clearer-headed; they knew that labor as such is slavery, and that no man can feel a personal pride in being a laborer. A man can be proud of being a worker — someone, that is, who fabricates enduring objects, but in our society, the process of fabrication has been so rationalized in the interests of speed, economy and quantity that the part played by the individual factory employee has become too small for it to be meaningful to him as work, and practically all workers have been reduced to laborers. It is only natural, therefore, that the arts which cannot be rationalized in this way — the artist still remains personally responsible for what he makes — should fascinate those who, because they have no marked talent, are afraid, with good reason, that all they have to look forward to is a lifetime of meaningless labor. This fascination is not due to the nature of art itself, but to the way in which an artists works; he, and in our age, almost nobody else, is his own master. The idea of being one’s own master appeals to most human beings, and this is apt to lead to the fantastic hope that the capacity for artistic creation is universal, something nearly all human beings, by virtue, not by some special talent, but due to their humanity, could do if they tried. W.h. Auden
89
In times of joy, all of us wished we possessed a tail we could wag. W.h. Auden
90
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
91
After Portia has trapped Shylock through his own insistence upon the letter of the law of Contract, she produces another law by which any alien who conspires against the life of a Venetian citizen forfeits his goods and places his life at the Doge’s mercy. […] Shakespeare, it seems to me, was willing to introduce what is an absurd implausibility for the sake of an effect which he could not secure without it: at the last moment when, through his conduct, Shylock has destroyed any sympathy we may have felt for him earlier, we are reminded that, irrespective of his personal character, his status is one of inferiority. A Jew is not regarded, even in law, as a brother. W.h. Auden
92
In most poetic expressions of patriotism, it is impossible to distinguish what is one of the greatest human virtues from the worst human vice, collective egotism. W.h. Auden
93
I have never, I think, wanted to 'belong' to a group whose interests were not mine, nor have I resented exclusion. Why should thet accept me? All I have ever asked is that others should go their way and let me go mine. W.h. Auden
94
The way to read a fairy tale is to throw yourself in. W.h. Auden
95
A dead man who never caused others to die seldom rates a statue. W.h. Auden
96
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
97
All I have is a voice. W.h. Auden