Quotes by W. H. Auden

About W. H. Auden:

Wystan Hugh Auden is noted for its stylistic and technical achievement, its engagement with moral and political issues, and its variety in tone, form and content. The central themes of his poetry are love, politics and citizenship, religion and morals, and the relationship between unique human beings and the anonymous, impersonal world of nature.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

The words of a dead man are modified in the guts of the living.

W. H. Auden

Learn from your dreams what you lack.

W. H. Auden

God bless the USA, so large, so friendly, and so rich.

W. H. Auden

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

W. H. Auden

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

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

Good can imagine Evil; but Evil cannot imagine Good.

W. H. Auden

Hemingway is terribly limited. His technique is good for short stories, for people who meet once in a bar very late at night, but do not enter into relations. But not for the novel.

W. H. Auden

In a world of prayer, we are all equal in the sense that each of us is a unique person, with a unique perspective on the world, a member of a class of one.

W. H. Auden

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
Funny quotes by W. H. Auden, UberQuotes

We are all here on earth to help others; what on earth the others are here for I don't know.

W. H. Auden

Choice of attention - to pay attention to this and ignore that - is to the inner life what choice of action is to the outer. In both cases, a man is responsible for his choice and must accept the consequences, whatever they may be.

W. H. Auden

If time were the wicked sheriff in a horse opera, I'd pay for riding lessons and take his gun away.

W. H. Auden

Of all possible subjects, travel is the most difficult for an artist, as it is the easiest for a journalist.

W. H. Auden

Every American poet feels that the whole responsibility for contemporary poetry has fallen upon his shoulders, that he is a literary aristocracy of one.

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

When I find myself in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a room full of dukes.

W. H. Auden

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

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

I'll love you, dear, I'll love you till China and Africa meet and the river jumps over the mountain and the salmon sing in the street.

W. H. Auden

If equal affection cannot be, let the more loving be me.

W. H. Auden

Author Bio

  • NameW. H. Auden
  • DescriptionAnglo-American poet
  • BornFebruary 21, 1907
  • DiedSeptember 28, 1973
  • CountryUnited Kingdom; United States Of America
  • ProfessionPoet; Screenwriter; Literary Historian; Playwright; Writer; Librettist
  • AwardsGuggenheim Fellowship; Austrian State Prize For European Literature; Bollingen Prize; Pulitzer Prize For Poetry; National Book Award; Queen's Gold Medal For Poetry