Top 350 W.H. Auden Quotes (2024 Update)
Page 2 of 8

51. “The most exciting rhythms seem unexpected and complex, the most beautiful melodies simple and inevitable.”

— W.H. Auden

52. “Happy the hare at morning, for she cannot read The hunter’s waking thoughts.”

— W.H. Auden

53. “I know nothing, except what everyone knows – if there when Grace dances, I should dance.”

— W.H. Auden

54. “About suffering they were never wrong, The Old Masters; How well they understood Its human position; how it takes place While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along.”

— W.H. Auden

55. “In life the loser’s score is always zero.”

— W.H. Auden

56. “Does God judge us by appearances? I Suspect that He does.”

— W.H. Auden

57. “There are bills to be paid, machines to keep in repair, Irregular verbs to learn, the Time Being to redeem From insignificance.”

— W.H. Auden

58. “A poet, qua poet, has only one political duty, namely, in his own writing to set an example of the correct use of his mother tongue, which is always being corrupted. When words lose their meaning, physical force takes over.”

— W.H. Auden

59. “Look if you like, but you will have to leap.”

— W.H. Auden

60. “Lost in a haunted wood, Children afraid of the night Who have never been happy or good.”

— W.H. Auden

61. “August for the people and their favourite islands. Daily the steamers sidle up to meet The effusive welcome of the pier.”

— W.H. Auden

62. “If we really want to live, we’d better start at once to try.”

— W.H. Auden

63. “Blessed be all metrical rules that forbid automatic responses, force us to have second thoughts, free us from the fetters of Self.”

— W.H. Auden

64. “And none will hear the postman’s knock Without a quickening of the heart. For who can bear to feel himself forgotten?”

— W.H. Auden

65. “Harrow the house of the dead; look shining at New styles of architecture, a change of heart.”

— W.H. Auden

66. “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.”

— W.H. Auden

67. “Death is the sound of distant thunder at a picnic.”

— W.H. Auden

68. “Few people take an interest in Iceland, but in those few the interest is passionate.”

— W.H. Auden

69. “Encased in talent like a uniform, The rank of every poet is well known; They can amaze us like a thunderstorm, Or die so young, or live for years alone.”

— W.H. Auden

70. “Words have no word for words that are not true.”

— W.H. Auden

71. “Goodness is easier to recognize than to define.”

— W.H. Auden

72. “Civilizations should be measured by the degree of diversity attained and the degree of unity retained.”

— W.H. Auden

73. “Intellectual disgrace Stares from every human face, And the seas of pity lie Locked and frozen in each eye.”

— W.H. Auden

74. “The most important truths are likely to be those which society at that time least wants to hear.”

— W.H. Auden

75. “Poetry makes nothing happen.”

— W.H. Auden

76. “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.”

— W.H. Auden

77. “Each in the cell of himself is almost convinced of his freedom.”

— W.H. Auden

78. “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.”

— W.H. Auden

79. “There must always be two kinds of art: escape-art, for man needs escape as he needs food and deep sleep, and parable-art, that art which shall teach man to unlearn hatred and learn love.”

— W.H. Auden

80. “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

81. “For love: a poet. For romance: a journalist.”

— W.H. Auden

82. “Far from his illness The wolves ran on through the evergreen forests, The peasant river was untempted by the fashionable quays; By mourning tongues The death of the poet was kept from his poems.”

— W.H. Auden

83. “Earth, receive an honored guest; William Yeats is laid to rest. Let the Irish vessel lie Emptied of its poetry.”

— W.H. Auden

84. “We do not change as we grow up. The difference between the child and the adult is that the former doesn’t know who he is and the latter does.”

— W.H. Auden

85. “Swans in the winter air A white perfection have.”

— W.H. Auden

86. “The glacier knocks in the cupboard, The desert sighs in the bed, And the crack in the teacup opens A lane to the land of the dead.”

— W.H. Auden

87. “See without looking, hear without listening, breathe without asking.”

— W.H. Auden

88. “Proper names are poetry in the raw. Like all poetry they are untranslatable.”

— W.H. Auden

89. “Though one cannot always Remember exactly why one has been happy, There is no forgetting that one was.”

— W.H. Auden

90. “Shall memory restore The steps and the shore, The face and the meeting place;.”

— W.H. Auden

91. “Those who will not reason, perish in the act. Those who will not act, perish for that reason.”

— W.H. Auden

92. “There is no love; There are only the various envies, all of them sad.”

— W.H. Auden

93. “A professor is someone who talks in someone else’s sleep.”

— W.H. Auden

94. “The friends who met here and embraced are gone, Each to his own mistake;.”

— W.H. Auden

95. “I’ll love you, dear, I’ll love you till China and Africa meet and the river jumps over the mountain and the salmon sing in the street.”

— W.H. Auden

96. “Out on the lawn I lie in bed, Vega conspicuous overhead.”

— W.H. Auden

97. “A dead man who never caused others to die seldom rates a statue.”

— W.H. Auden

98. “One rational voice is dumb: over a grave The household of Impulse mourns one dearly loved. Sad is Eros, builder of cities, And weeping anarchic Aphrodite.”

— W.H. Auden

99. “A shilling life will give you all the facts.”

— W.H. Auden

100. “The way to read a fairy tale is to throw yourself in.”

— W.H. Auden