W. H. Auden
W. H. Auden
Wystan Hugh Audenwas an English poet, who later became an American citizen. 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." He was born in York, grew up in and near Birmingham in a professional middle-class...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth21 February 1907
W. H. Auden quotes about
country men law
America has always been a country of amateurs where the professional, that is to say, the man who claims authority as a member of an élite which knows the law in some field or other, is an object of distrust and resentment.
discovery wish important
One of the most horrible, yet most important, discoveries of our age has been that, if you really wish to destroy a person and turn him into an automaton, the surest method is not physical torture, in the strict sense, but simply to keep him awake, i.e., in an existential relation to life without intermission.
stupid long people
It's usually the stupid people that develop long illnesses. You need more than indolence and selfishness, you need endurance to make a good patient.
zero winning games
In a game, just losing is almost as satisfying as just winning... In life the loser's score is always zero.
sorrow gold mountain
There was still gold and silver in the mountains, And hunger was a more immediate sorrow
our-world body claims
Our claim to our own bodies and our world is our catastrophe.
listening prose remarks
Yet no one hears his own remarks as prose.
suffering criticism ugly
It's better to say, 'I'm suffering,' than to say, 'This landscape is ugly.
sadness envy no-love
There is no love; There are only the various envies, all of them sad.
communication life-is human-life
Without communication with the dead, a fully human life is not possible.
luxury soul stones
Cathedrals, luxury liners laden with souls, Holding to the east their hulls of stone.
memories believe men
Christ did not enchant men; He demanded that they believe in Him: except on one occasion, the Transfiguration. For a brief while, Peter, James, and John were permitted to see Him in His glory. For that brief while they had no need of faith. The vision vanished, and the memory of it did not prevent them from all forsaking Him when He was arrested, or Peter from denying that he had ever known Him.
thinking firsts study
There has been a vast output of critical studies in contemporary poetry, some of them first rate, but I do not think that , as a rule, a poet should read them.
life hope wish
Weep for the lives your wishes never led.