Top W. H. Auden Quotes - Quotesmemo.com

W. H. Auden Biography

Wystan Hugh Auden (21 February 1907 – 29 September 1973) was an English-American poet. Auden's poetry was noted for its stylistic and technical achievement, its engagement with politics, morals, love, and religion, and its variety in tone, form and content. He is best known for love poems such as "Funeral Blues", poems on political and social themes such as "September 1, 1939" and "The Shield of Achilles", poems on cultural and psychological themes such as The Age of Anxiety, and poems on religious themes such as "For the Time Being" and "Horae Canonicae."

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W. H. Auden Quotes

Lost in a haunted wood, Children afraid of the night Who have never been happy or good.

Afraid, Children, Fear, Good, Night, Wood

An unmanly sort of man whose love life seems to have been largely confined to crying in laps and playing mouse.

Confined, Lap, Love Life, Men, Playing, Unmanly

The poet who writes "free" verse is like Robinson Crusoe on his desert island: he must do all his cooking, laundry and darning for himself. In a few exceptional cases, this manly independence produces something original and impressive, but more often the result is squalor dirty sheets on the unmade bed and empty bottles on the unswept floor.

Dirty, Free, Island, Islands, Squalor, Writing

One of the troubles of our times is that we are all, I think, precocious as personalities and backward as characters.

Character, Personalities, Personality, Precocious, Thinking, Times

Weep for the lives your wishes never led.

Hope, Life, Lives, Weep, Wish, Wishes

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

Art, False, Notion, Science, Technology

Few people take an interest in Iceland, but in those few the interest is passionate.

Iceland, Interest, Passionate, People

One can only blaspheme if one believes.

Believe, Believes, Blaspheme, Ifs

The belief that politics can be scientific must inevitably produce tyrannies. Politics cannot be a science, because in politics theory and practice cannot be separated, and the sciences depend upon their separation. Empirical politics must be kept in bounds by democratic institutions, which leave it up to the subjects of the experiment to say whether it shall be tried, and to stop it if they dislike it, because, in politics, there is a distinction, unknown to science, between Truth and Justice.

Justice, Politics, Practice, Science, Subjects, Truth

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

Death, Gmos, Guts, Men, Modified, Words

I'm always amazed at the American practice of allowing one party to a homosexual act to remain passive--it's so undemocratic. Sexmust be mutual.

American, Homosexuality, Mutual, Party, Practice

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.

Born, Dance, Figure, Heart, Men, Stars

Lay your sleeping head, my love, Human on my faithless arm.

Arm, Arms, Faithless, Head, Lay, Sleep

Beloved, we are always in the wrong, Handling so clumsily our stupid lives, Suffering too little or too long, Too careful even in our selfish loves: The decorative manias we obey Die in grimaces round us every day, Yet through their tohu-bohu comes a voice Which utters an absurd command - Rejoice.

Absurd, Long, Rejoice, Selfish, Stupid, Voice

Poetry is the only art people haven't learned to consume like soup.

Art, Consume, Like, People, Poetry

Happy the hare at morning, for she cannot read The hunter's waking thoughts.

Hare, Hunters, Morning, Read, Thoughts, Waking

Precisely because we do not communicate by singing, a song can be out of place but not out of character; it is just as credible that a stupid person should sing beautifully as that a clever person should do so.

Clever, Person, Singing, Song, Stupid

The countenances of children, like those of animals, are masks, not faces, for they have not yet developed a significant profile of their own.

Animal, Animals, Children, Faces

For time is inches And the heart's changes, Where ghost has haunted Lost and wanted.

Changes, Ghost, Heart, Time

Composing mortals with immortal fire.

Composing, Fire, Immortal

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