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
art culture earn fact money poet practicing sad talking
It's a sad fact about our culture that a poet can earn much more money writing or talking about his art than he can by practicing it.
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.
giving facts
A shilling life will give you all the facts.
facts firsts get-up
Get up very early and get going at once. In fact, work first and wash afterwards.
hell factories assembly
One cannot walk through an assembly factory and not feel that one is in Hell.
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.
technique crafts sincerity
Sincerity is technique.
curate full room science shabby
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.
english-poet
For who can bear to feel himself forgotten?
love relationship running
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.
love fuel excellent
Money cannot buy the fuel of love but is excellent kindling.
love country attitude
We are not commanded (or forbidden) to love our mates, our children, our friends, our country because such affections come naturally to us and are good in themselves, although we may corrupt them. We are commanded to love our neighbor because our natural attitude toward the other is one of either indifference or hostility.
love children believe
God is Love, we are taught as children to believe. But when we first begin to get some inkling of how He loves us, we are repelled; it seems so cold, indeed, not love at all as we understand the word.
love inspirational dream
A daydream is a meal at which images are eaten. Some of us are gourmets, some gourmands, and a good many take their images precooked out of a can and swallow them down whole, absent-mindedly and with little relish.