W. H. Auden Quotes - Famous Quotes by W. H. Auden
Born: 1907-02-21
Died: 1973-09-29
W. H. Auden Biography
A poet's hope to be, like some valley cheese, local, but prized elsewhere.
- W. H. Auden
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A professor is one who talks in someone else's sleep.
- W. H. Auden
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Accurate scholarship can
unearth the whole offence
from luther untill noe
that has driven a culture mad.
From what occured at linz
what huge imago made
a psychopathic god.
i and the public know
what all schoolchildren learn
those to whom evil is done
do evil in return.
- W. H. Auden
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Acts of injustice done
Between the setting and the rising sun
In history lie like bones, each one.
- W. H. Auden
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Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can: all of them make me laugh.
- W. H. Auden
More quotations on: [ Love ] [ Laughter ] ***
Anyone who has a child today should train him to be either a physicist or a ballet dancer. Then he'll escape.
- W. H. Auden
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As a rule it was the pleasure haters that became unjust.
- W. H. Auden
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Desire, even in its wildest tantrums, can neither persuade me it is love nor stop me from wishing it were.
- W. H. Auden
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False enchantment can last a lifetime.
- W. H. Auden
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Geniuses are the luckiest of mortals because what they must do is the same as what they most want to do.
- W. H. Auden
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Goodness is easier to recognize than to define.
- W. H. Auden
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History is, strictly speaking, the study of questions the study of answers belongs to anthropology and sociology.
- W. H. Auden
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If there are any of you at the back who do not hear me, please don't raise your hands because I am also nearsighted.
- W. H. Auden
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In times of joy, all of us wished we possessed a tail we could wag.
- W.H. Auden
More quotations on: [ Joy ] ***
It takes little talent to see what lies under one's nose, a good deal to know in what direction to point that organ.
- W. H. Auden
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May it not be that, just as we have faith in Him, God has to have faith in us and, considering the history of the human race so far, may it not be that faith is even more difficult for Him than it is for us
- W. H. Auden
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Murder is unique in that it abolishes the party it injures, so that society has to take the place of the victim and on his behalf demand atonement or grant forgiveness it is the one crime in which society has a direct interest.
- W. H. Auden
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No opera plot can be sensible, for in sensible situations people do not sing.
- W H Auden
More quotations on: [ Music ] ***
One cannot review a bad book without showing off.
- W. H. Auden
More quotations on: [ Criticism ] ***
Some books are undeservedly forgotten; none are undeservedly remembered.
- W. H. Auden
More quotations on: [ Book ] ***
The class distinctions proper to a democratic society are not those of rank or money, still less, as is apt to happen when these are abandoned, of race, but of age.
- W. H. Auden
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The countenances of children, like those of animals, are masks, not faces, for they have not yet developed a significant profile of their own.
- W. H. Auden
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The image of myself which I try to create in my own mind in order that I may love myself is very different from the image which I try to create in the minds of others in order that they may love me.
- W. H. Auden
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Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.
- W.H. Auden
More quotations on: [ Love ] ***
To ask the hard question is simple.
- W. H. Auden
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To save your world you asked this man to die;
Would this man, could he see you now, ask why?
- W. H. Auden
More quotations on: [ Death ] [ War ] ***
We are here on Earth to do good to others. What the others are here for, I don't know.
- W. H. Auden
More quotations on: [ Goodness ] ***
We must love one another or die.
- W.H. Auden
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Weep for the lives your wishes never led.
- W. H. Auden
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What the mass media offers is not popular art, but entertainment which is intended to be consumed like food, forgotten, and replaced by a new dish.
- W. H. Auden
More quotations on: [ Entertainment ] [ Art ] ***
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.
- W. H. Auden
More quotations on: [ Science ] ***
When one has great gifts, what answer to the meaning of existence should one require beyond the right to exercise them
- W. H. Auden
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