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
fairy-tale tales hunts
To hunt for symbols in a fairy tale is absolutely fatal.
dance children ballet
Anyone who has a child today should train him to be either a physicist or a ballet dancer. Then he'll escape.
science wish alive
Oh, how I wish that Orwell were still alive, so that I could read his comments on contemporary events!
past men history
Man is a history-making creature, who can neither repeat his past, nor leave it behind.
pay-the-price people use
People always get what they want. But there is a price for everything. Failures are either those who do not know what they want or are not prepared to pay the price asked them. The price varies from individual to individual. Some get things at bargain-sale prices, others only at famine prices. But it is no use grumbling. Whatever price you are asked, you must pay.
time conquer deceiving
O let not Time deceive you, You cannot conquer Time.
memories faces steps
Shall memory restore The steps and the shore, The face and the meeting place;
writing answers goes-on
But if a stranger in the train asks me my occupation, I never answer "writer" for fear that he may go on to ask me what I write, and to answer "poetry" would embarrass us both, for we both know that nobody can earn a living simply by writing poetry.
nature woods climate
a culture is no better than its woods
sorry intelligent men
To the man-in-the-street, who, I'm sorry to say, is a keen observer of life. The word Intellectual suggests straight away. A man who's untrue to his wife.
blessed self force
Blessed be all metrical rules that forbid automatic responses, force us to have second thoughts, free us from the fetters of Self.
happiness men important
It is nonsense to speak of 'higher' and 'lower' pleasures. To a hungry man it is, rightly, more important that he eat than that he philosophize.
pain mean anxiety
To be happy means to be free, not from pain or fear, but from care or anxiety.
unique reality two
One demands two things of a poem. Firstly, it must be a well-made verbal object that does honor to the language in which it is written. Secondly, it must say something significant about a reality common to us all, but perceived from a unique perspective. What the poet says has never been said before, but, once he has said it, his readers recognize its validity for themselves.