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
english-poet
For who can bear to feel himself forgotten?
doe torture no-nonsense
Of course,Behaviourism 'works'. So does torture.
hope food cooking
A poet's hope: to be, like some valley cheese, local, but prized elsewhere.
reason
Those who will not reason, perish in the act. Those who will not act, perish for that reason.
smell sight people
Most people enjoy the sight of their own handwriting as they enjoy the smell of their own farts.
grateful analysis be-grateful
Aside from purely technical analysis, nothing can be said about music, except when it is bad; when it is good, one can only listen and be grateful.
symbols
What we have not named as a symbol escapes our notice.
cities soul holes
Say this city has ten million souls, Some are living in mansions, some are living in holes: Yet there’s no place for us, my dear, yet there’s no place for us.
fate puppets chance
Every high C accurately struck demolishes the theory that we are the irresponsible puppets of fate or chance.
criticism conversation casual
Criticism should be a casual conversation.
work men thinking
A tremendous number of people in America work very hard at something that bores them. Even a rich man thinks he has to go down to the office everyday. Not because he likes it but because he can't think of anything else to do.
work thinking order
In order that people may be happy in their work, these three things are needed: They must be fit for it: they must not do too much of it: and they must have a sense of success in it - not a doubtful sense, such as needs some testimony of others for its confirmation, but a sure sense, or rather knowledge, that so much work has been done well, and fruitfully done, whatever the world may say or think about it.
differences age who-we-are
Between the ages of twenty and forty we are engaged in the process of discovering who we are, which involves learning the differences between accidental limitations which it is our duty to outgrow and the necessary limitations of our nature beyond which we cannot trespass with impunity.
smell doe invisible
Music can be made anywhere, is invisible and does not smell.