W. H. Auden quotes

Wystan Hugh Auden, known as W. H. Auden, was a distinguished English-American poet born in 1907. Renowned for his unique poetic style and intellectual approach, Auden's work blended personal introspection with political and social commentary. His poetry explored themes of love, religion, and the complexities of human existence, earning him a Pulitzer Prize in 1948. Auden's prolific body of work includes iconic poems such as "Funeral Blues" and "September 1, 1939." Throughout his life, he embraced travel, seeking inspiration and engaging with various cultures. Auden's contributions continue to resonate, making him one of the most influential literary figures of the 20th century.

Every American poet feels that the whole responsibility for contemporary poetry has fallen upon his shoulders, that he is a literary aristocracy of one.

- W. H. Auden

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

- W. H. Auden

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

- W. H. Auden

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

Music can be made anywhere, is invisible and does not smell.

- W. H. Auden

My face looks like a wedding-cake left out in the rain.

- W. H. Auden

Perhaps there is only one cardinal sin: impatience. Because of impatience we were driven out of Paradise, because of impatience we cannot return.

- W. H. Auden

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

- W. H. Auden

Art is born of humiliation.

- W. H. Auden

A professor is someone who talks in someone else's sleep.

- W. H. Auden

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

A verbal art like poetry is reflective; it stops to think. Music is immediate, it goes on to become.

- W. H. Auden

We are all here on earth to help others; what on earth the others are here for I don't know.

- W. H. Auden

Art is our chief means of breaking bread with the dead.

- W. H. Auden

If equal affection cannot be, let the more loving be me.

- W. H. Auden

Good can imagine Evil; but Evil cannot imagine Good.

- W. H. Auden

A poet can write about a man slaying a dragon, but not about a man pushing a button that releases a bomb.

- W. H. Auden

Music is the best means we have of digesting time.

- W. H. Auden

A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us.

- W. H. Auden

All that we are not stares back at what we are.

- W. H. Auden

In times of joy, all of us wished we possessed a tail we could wag.

- W. H. Auden

Every autobiography is concerned with two characters, a Don Quixote, the Ego, and a Sancho Panza, the Self.

- W. H. Auden

No good opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible.

- W. H. Auden

To save your world you asked this man to die; would this man, could he see you now, ask why?

- W. H. Auden

God bless the USA, so large, so friendly, and so rich.

- W. H. Auden

For who can bear to feel himself forgotten?

- W. H. Auden

Evil is unspectacular and always human, and shares our bed and eats at our own table.

- W. H. Auden

No human being is innocent, but there is a class of innocent human actions called Games.

- W. H. Auden

Choice of attention - to pay attention to this and ignore that - is to the inner life what choice of action is to the outer. In both cases, a man is responsible for his choice and must accept the consequences, whatever they may be.

- W. H. Auden

Some books are undeservedly forgotten; none are undeservedly remembered.

- W. H. Auden