Top 350 W.H. Auden Quotes (2025 Update)
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301. “Herds of reindeer move across Miles and miles of golden moss.”

— W.H. Auden

302. “In any first-class work of art, you can find passages that in themselves are extremely boring, but try to cut them out, as they are in an abridged edition, and you lose the life of the work. Don’t think that art that is alive can remain on the same level of interest throughout – and the same is true of life.”

— W.H. Auden

303. “No poet or novelist wishes he were the only one who ever lived, but most of them wish they were the only one alive, and quite a number fondly believe their wish has been granted.”

— W.H. Auden

304. “What we have not named as a symbol escapes our notice.”

— W.H. Auden

305. “The element of craftsmanship in poetry is obscured by the fact that all men are taught to speak and most to read and write, while very few men are taught to draw or paint or write music.”

— W.H. Auden

306. “Why doesn’t the United States take over the monarchy and unite with England? England does have important assets. Naturally the longer you wait, the more they will dwindle. At least you could use it for a summer resort instead of Maine.”

— W.H. Auden

307. “The critical opinions of a writer should always be taken with a large grain of salt. For the most part, they are manifestations of his debate with himself as to what he should do next and what he should avoid.”

— W.H. Auden

308. “Ideally, government is the means by which all the individual wills are assured complete freedom of moral choice and at the same time prevented from ever clashing.”

— W.H. Auden

309. “One cannot walk through an assembly factory and not feel that one is in Hell.”

— W.H. Auden

310. “The parlour cars and Pullmans are packed also with scented assassins, salad-eaters who murder on milk.”

— W.H. Auden

311. “Of all possible subjects, travel is the most difficult for an artist, as it is the easiest for a journalist.”

— W.H. Auden

312. “What is a Professor of Poetry? How can poetry be professed?”

— W.H. Auden

313. “A man is a form of life that dreams in order to act and acts in order to dream.”

— W.H. Auden

314. “There has been a vast output of critical studies in contemporary poetry, some of them first rate, but I do not think that, as a rule, a poet should read them.”

— W.H. Auden

315. “There are not many English novels which deserve to be called great: Parade’s End is one of them.”

— W.H. Auden

316. “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.”

— W.H. Auden

317. “It’s frightening how easy it is to commit murder in America. Just a drink too much. I can see myself doing it. In England, one feels all the social restraints holding one back. But here, anything can happen.”

— W.H. Auden

318. “All works of art are commissioned in the sense that no artist can create one by a simple act of will but must wait until what he believes to be a good idea for a work comes to him.”

— W.H. Auden

319. “Base words are uttered only by the base And can for such at once be understood; But noble platitudes – ah, there’s a case Where the most careful scrutiny is needed To tell a voice that’s genuinely good From one that’s base but merely has succeeded.”

— W.H. Auden

320. “The relation of faith between subject and object is unique in every case. Hundreds may believe, but each has to believe by himself.”

— W.H. Auden

321. “The identification of fantasy is always an attempt to avoid one’s own suffering: the identification of art is the sharing in the suffering of another.”

— W.H. Auden

322. “Long ago the accusations had begun, And suddenly knew by whom it had been judged.”

— W.H. Auden

323. “There is a difference between a villain and one who simply commits a crime. The villain is an extremely conscious person and commits a crim consciously, for its own sake.”

— W.H. Auden

324. “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.”

— W.H. Auden

325. “In relation to a writer, most readers believe in the Double Standard: they may be unfaithful to him as often as they like, but he must never, never be unfaithful to them.”

— W.H. Auden

326. “You will be a poet because you will always be humiliated.”

— W.H. Auden

327. “Composing mortals with immortal fire.”

— W.H. Auden

328. “Our sufferings and weaknesses, in so far as they are personal, are of no literary interest whatsoever. They are only interesting in so far as we can see them as typical of the human condition.”

— W.H. Auden

329. “One of the troubles of our times is that we are all, I think, precocious as personalities and backward as characters.”

— W.H. Auden

330. “To my generation no other English poet seemed so perfectly to express the sensibility of a male adolescent. If I do not now turn to him very often, I am eternally grateful to him for the joy he gave me in my youth.”

— W.H. Auden

331. “May it not be that, just as we have to 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

332. “When one looks into the window of a store which sells devotional art objects, one can’t help wishing the iconoclasts had won.”

— W.H. Auden

333. “A false enchantment can all too easily last a lifetime.”

— W.H. Auden

334. “Yet no one hears his own remarks as prose.”

— W.H. Auden

335. “I am sure it is everyone’s experience, as it has been mine, that any discovery we make about ourselves or the meaning of life is never, like a scientific discovery, a coming upon something entirely new and unsuspected; it is rather, the coming to conscious recognition of something, which we really knew all the time but, because we were unwilling to formulate it correctly, we did not hitherto know we knew.”

— W.H. Auden

336. “I’m always amazed at the American practice of allowing one party to a homosexual act to remain passive – it’s so undemocratic. Sexmust be mutual.”

— W.H. Auden

337. “To hunt for symbols in a fairy tale is absolutely fatal.”

— W.H. Auden

338. “I don’t get acting jobs because of my looks.”

— W.H. Auden

339. “A poet must never make a statement simply because it is sounds poetically exciting; he must also believe it to be true.”

— W.H. Auden

340. “Precisely because we do not communicate by singing, a song can be out of place but not out of character; it is just as credible that a stupid person should sing beautifully as that a clever person should do so.”

— W.H. Auden

341. “Fame often makes a writer vain, but seldom makes him proud.”

— W.H. Auden

342. “I write because I love to play with language.”

— W.H. Auden

343. “Any society is in danger of dismissing the virtue of another society because of its vices, and a democracy is always in danger of not paying enough attention to manners and forms.”

— W.H. Auden

344. “Murder is commoner among cooks than among members of any other profession.”

— W.H. Auden

345. “What answer to the meaning of existence should one require beyond the right to exercise one’s gifts?”

— W.H. Auden

346. “The older lives like not to be stood in rows or at right angles.”

— W.H. Auden

347. “Oh, how I wish that Orwell were still alive, so that I could read his comments on contemporary events!”

— W.H. Auden

348. “The surest sign that a man has a genuine taste of his own is that he is uncertain of it.”

— W.H. Auden

349. “The only reason the Protestants and Catholics have given up the idea of universal domination is because they’ve realised they can’t get away with it.”

— W.H. Auden

350. “It’s usually the stupid people that develop long illnesses. You need more than indolence and selfishness, you need endurance to make a good patient.”

— W.H. Auden