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
learning israel evil
I and the public know What all schoolchildren learn, Those to whom evil is done Do evil in return.
afterlife water landscape
If it form the one landscape that we the inconstant ones Are consistently homesick for, this is chiefly Because it dissolves in water.
responsibility machines bills
There are bills to be paid, machines to keep in repair, Irregular verbs to learn, the Time Being to redeem From insignificance.
long-ago judgment accusation
Long ago the accusations had begun, And suddenly knew by whom it had been judged
sorrow gold mountain
There was still gold and silver in the mountains, And hunger was a more immediate sorrow
listening prose remarks
Yet no one hears his own remarks as prose.
curious genealogy delusion
Genealogies are admirable things, provided they do not encourage the curious delusion that some families are older than others.
motorcycle tables artifacts
A poem is a verbal artifact which must be as skillfully and solidly constructed as a table or a motorcycle.
miracle demand facts
We who must die demand a miracle. How could the Eternal do a temporal act, The Infinite become a finite fact? Nothing can save us that is possible: We who must die demand a miracle.
faces wiser
Private faces in public places Are wiser and nicer Than public faces in private places.
funny science simple
Of course, Behaviourism 'works'. So does torture. Give me a no-nonsense, down-to-earth behaviourist, a few drugs, and simple electrical appliances, and in six months I will have him reciting the Athanasian Creed in public.
parades ends novel
There are not many English novels which deserve to be called great: Parade's End is one of them.
insane world facts
A person incapable of imaging another world than given to him by his senses would be subhuman, and a person who identifies his imaginary world with the world of sensory fact has become insane.
responsibility aristocracy poetic
Every American poet feels that the whole responsibility for contemporary poetry has fallen upon his shoulders, that he is a literary aristocracy of one.