Wystan Hugh Auden Quotes (33 Quotes)

If the most significant characteristic of man is the complex of biological needs he shares with all members of his species, then the best lives for the writer to observe are those in which the role of natural necessity is clearest, namely, the lives of the very poor.

How happy the lot of the mathematician. He is judged solely by his peers, and the standard is so high that no colleague or rival can ever win a reputation he does not deserve.

Most people enjoy the sight of their own handwriting as they enjoy the smell of their own farts.

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.

The Old Masters. About suffering they were never wrong.

You have to see the sex act comically, as a child.

Thou shalt not answer questionnaires Or quizzes upon world affairs, Nor with compliance Take any test. Thou shalt not sit with statisticians nor commit A social science.

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

What all schoolchildren learn those to whom evil is done do evil in return.

You owe it to us all to get on with what you're good at.

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.

History to the defeated May say Alas but cannot help nor pardon.

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.

We are here on Earth to do good for others. What the others are here for, I do not know.

A daydream is a meal at which images are eaten. Some of us are gourmets, some gourmands, and a good many take their images precooked out of a can and swallow them down whole, absent-mindedly and with little relish.

What people don't realize is that intimacy has its conventions as well as ordinary social intercourse. 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.

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

Adjectives are the potbelly of poetry.

A false enchantment can all too easily last a lifetime.

Every high C accurately struck demolishes the theory that we are the irresponsible puppets of fate or chance.

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

It takes little talent to see clearly what lies under one's nose, a good deal of it to know in which direction to point that organ.

A poet's hope to be, like some valley cheese, local, but prized elsewhere.

Those who will not reason, perish in the act. Those who will not act, perish for that reason.

No hero is immortal till he dies.

Man is a history-making creature who can neither repeat his past nor leave it behind.

I cannot accept the doctrine that in poetry there is a 'suspension of belief.' A poet must never make a statement simply because it is sounds poetically exciting he must also believe it to be true.

One cannot review a bad book without showing off.

This is the Night Mail crossing the Border Bringing the cheque and the postal order.

As a poet there is only one political duty, and that is to defend one's language against corruption. When it is corrupted, people lose faith in what they hear and this leads to violence.

Every European visitor to the United States is struck by the comparative rarity of what he would call a face, by the frequency of men and women who look like elderly babies. If he stays in the States for any length of time, he will learn that this cannot be put down to a lack of sensibility -- the American feels the joys and sufferings of human life as keenly as anybody else. The only plausible explanation I can find lies in his different attitude to the past. To have a face, in the European sense of the word, it would seem that one must not only enjoy and suffer but also desire to preserve the memory of even the most humiliating and unpleasant experiences of the past.

... see without looking, ... hear without seeing, ... breathe without asking.

The only way to spend New Year's Eve is either quietly with friends or in a brothel. Otherwise when the evening ends and people pair off, someone is bound to be left in tears.