W. H. Auden

Wystan Hugh Auden (21 February 1907 – 29 September 1973) was an Anglo-American poet known for his vast poetic work in many forms on many themes.

Quotes

Private faces in public places
Are wiser and nicer
Than public faces in private places.
- The Orators (1932) dedication

I'm beginning to lose patience
With my personal relations:
They are not deep,
And they are not cheap.
- "Shorts" (c. 1932) no. 6. Collected Shorter Poems, 1927–1957 (1966) pt. 1

The sky is darkening like a stain,
Something is going to fall like rain
And it won't be flowers.
- "The Witnesses", III, in The Listener, vol. 10, no. 259 (12 July 1933) p. 1,010

Happy the hare at morning, for she cannot read
The Hunter's waking thoughts.
- The Dog Beneath the Skin (1935) act II, sc. 2, chorus

I see it often since you’ve been away:
The island, the veranda, and the fruit;
The tiny steamer breaking from the bay;
The literary mornings with its hoot;
Our ugly comic servant; and then you,
Lovely and willing every afternoon.
- "Sonnets", I, in New Verse, no. 5 (October 1933) p. 15

At the far end of the enormous room
An orchestra is playing to the rich.
- "Sonnets", I, in New Verse, no. 5 (October 1933) p. 15

This is the Night Mail crossing the Border,
Bringing the cheque and the postal order,
Letters for the rich, letters for the poor,
The shop at the corner, the girl next door.
Pulling up Beattock, a steady climb:
The gradient's against her, but she’s on time.
Past cotton-grass and moorland border,
Shovelling white steam over her shoulder.
- Night Mail (1936)

Letters of thanks, letters from banks,
Letters of joy from girl and boy,
Receipted bills and invitations
To inspect new stock or to visit relations,
And applications for situations,
And timid lovers' declarations,
And gossip, gossip from all the nations.
- Night Mail (1936)

Acts of injustice done
Between the setting and the rising sun
In history lie like bones, each one.
- The Ascent of F6 (1936) act II, sc. 5
- Quoted in Richard Adams, Watership Down (1972) ch. 21

Every day America's destroyed and re-created,
America is what you do,
America is I and you,
America is what you choose to make it.
- Paul Bunyan (5 May 1941) act II, sc. 2

In a garden shady this holy lady
With reverent cadence and subtle psalm,
Like a black swan as death came on
Poured forth her song in perfect calm:
And by ocean’s margin this innocent virgin
Constructed an organ to enlarge her prayer,
And notes tremendous from her great engine
Thundered out on the Roman air.
Blonde Aphrodite rose up excited,
Moved to delight by the melody,
White as an orchid she rode quite naked
In an oyster shell on top of the sea.
- "Three Songs for St. Cecilia's Day", no. 1, in Harper's Bazaar (December 1941). Revised in Collected Shorter Poems, 1930–1944 (1950) p. 233

Blessed Cecilia, appear in visions
To all musicians, appear and inspire:
Translated Daughter, come down and startle
Composing mortals with immortal fire.
- "Three Songs for St. Cecilia's Day", no. 1

A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.
- "Squares and Oblongs", in Poets at Work (1948) p. 170

The masculine imagination lives in a state of perpetual revolt against the limitations of human life. In theological terms, one might say that all men, left to themselves, become gnostics. They may swagger like peacocks, but in their heart of hearts they all think sex an indignity and wish they could beget themselves on themselves. Hence the aggressive hostility toward women so manifest in most club-car stories.
- Foreword to Phyllis McGinley's Times Three: Selected Verse from Three Decades (1960) p. xi

Left to itself the masculine imagination has very little appreciation for the here and now; it prefers to dwell on what is absent, on what has been or may be. If men are more punctual than women, it is because they know that, without the external discipline of clock time, they would never get anything done.
- Foreword to Phyllis McGinley's Times Three (1960) p. xi

Aphorisms are essentially an aristocratic genre of writing.
- Foreword to The Viking Book of Aphorisms (1962) p. v

Though the great artists of the past could not change the course of history, it is only through their work that we are able to break bread with the dead, and without communion with the dead a fully human life is impossible.
- "Words and the Word". Secondary Worlds (1968) p. 141

Only in rites
can we renounce our oddities
and be truly entired.
- "Archaeology", st. 18. Thank You, Fog (1974) p. 16

Poems (1933)

London: Faber & Faber

Let us honor if we can
The vertical man
Though we value none
But the horizontal one.
- Epigraph (to Christopher Isherwood)

Put the car away; when life fails
What's the good of going to Wales?
Here am I, here are you:
But what does it mean? What are we going to do?
- IX

If we really want to live, we’d better start at once to try;
If we don’t it doesn’t matter, we’d better start to die.
- XXII

To ask the hard question is simple,
The simple act of the confused will.
- XXVII

Sir, no man's enemy, forgiving all
But will his negative inversion, be prodigal:
Send to us power and light, a sovereign touch
Curing the intolerable neural itch,
The exhaustion of weaning, the liar's quinsy,
And the distortions of ingrown virginity.
- XXX

Harrow the house of the dead; look shining at
New styles of architecture, a change of heart.
- XXX

Look, Stranger! (1936) · On This Island (1937)

London: Faber & Faber · New York: Random House

And make us as Newton was, who in his garden watching
The apple falling towards England, became aware
Between himself and her of an eternal tie.
- I

Out on the lawn I lie in bed,
Vega conspicuous overhead.
- II (to Geoffrey Hoyland)

Let the florid music praise,
The flute and the trumpet,
Beauty’s conquest of your face:
In that land of flesh and bone,
Where from citadels on high
Her imperial standards fly,
Let the hot sun
Shine on, shine on.
- IV

Look, stranger, on this island now
The leaping light for your delight discovers,
Stand stable here
And silent be,
That through the channels of the ear
May wander like a river
The swaying sound of the sea.
- V

O what is that sound which so thrills the ear
Down in the valley drumming, drumming?
Only the scarlet soldiers, dear,
The soldiers coming.
- VI

O it's broken the lock and splintered the door,
O it's the gate where they're turning, turning;
Their boots are heavy on the floor
And their eyes are burning.
- VI

Now the leaves are falling fast,
Nurse's flowers will not last;
Nurses to their graves are gone,
And the prams go rolling on.
- VIII

Cold, impossible, ahead
Lifts the mountain's lovely head
Whose white waterfall could bless
Travellers in their last distress.
- VIII

A shilling life will give you all the facts.
- XIII

If we really want to live, we'd better start at once to try;
If we don't it doesn't matter, we'd better start to die.
- XXII

Fish in the unruffled lakes
Their swarming colours wear,
Swans in the winter air
A white perfection have,
And the great lion walks
Through his innocent grove;
Lion, fish and swan
Act, and are gone
Upon Time's toppling wave.
- XXVII

We must lose our loves,
On each beast and bird that moves
Turn an envious look.
- XXVII

August for the people and their favourite islands.
Daily the steamers sidle up to meet
The effusive welcome of the pier.
- XXX (to Christopher Isherwood)

Spain (1937)

London: Faber & Faber

And the poor in their fireless lodgings, dropping the sheets
Of the evening paper: "Our day is our loss, O show us
   History the operator, the
Organiser, Time the refreshing river."
And the nations combine each cry, invoking the life
That shapes the individual belly and orders
   The private nocturnal terror:
"Did you not found the city state of the sponge,
"Raise the vast military empires of the shark
And the tiger, establish the robin's plucky canton?
  Intervene, O descend as a dove or
A furious papa or a mild engineer, but descend."
- ll. 33–44

On that arid square, that fragment nipped off from hot
Africa, soldered so crudely to inventive Europe;
   On that tableland scored by rivers,
Our thoughts have bodies; the menacing shapes of our fever
Are precise and alive. For the fears which made us respond
To the medicine ad and the brochure of winter cruises
  Have become invading battalions;
And our faces, the institute-face, the chain-store, the ruin
Are projecting their greed as the firing squad and the bomb.
Madrid is the heart. Our moments of tenderness blossom
   As the ambulance and the sandbag;
Our hours of friendship into a people's army.
- ll. 65–76

To-morrow the rediscovery of romantic love,
The photographing of ravens; all the fun under
   Liberty's masterful shadow;
To-morrow the hour of the pageant-master and the musician,
The beautiful roar of the chorus under the dome;
To-morrow the exchanging of tips on the breeding of terriers,
   The eager election of chairmen
By the sudden forest of hands. But to-day the struggle.
To-morrow for the young the poets exploding like bombs,
The walks by the lake, the weeks of perfect communion;
   To-morrow the bicycle races
Through the suburbs on summer evenings. But to-day the struggle.
- ll. 81–92

The stars are dead. The animals will not look.
We are left alone with our day, and the time is short, and
History to the defeated
May say Alas but cannot help nor pardon.
- ll. 101–104

Letters from Iceland (1937)

New York: Random House

My head looks like an egg upon a plate,
My nose is not too bad, but isn’t straight;
I have no proper eyebrows, and my eyes
Are far too close together to look nice.
- "Letter to Lord Byron"

The greater the love, the more false to its object
Not to be born is the best for man
After the kiss comes the impulse to throttle
Break the embraces, dance while you can.
- "Letter to William Coldstream, Esq."

The desires of the heart are as crooked as corkscrews
Not to be born is the best for man
The second best is a formal order
The dance’s pattern, dance while you can.
Dance, dance, for the figure is easy
The tune is catching and will not stop
Dance till the stars come down with the rafters
Dance, dance, dance till you drop.
- "Letter to William Coldstream, Esq."

Another Time (1940)

London: Faber & Faber

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone.
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
- "Funeral Blues", st. 1
- First published in The Ascent of F6 (1936) · Substantially revised in The Year's Poetry (1938)

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.
The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
- "Funeral Blues", sts. 3–4

Law, say the gardeners, is the sun,
Law is the one
All gardeners obey
To-morrow, yesterday, to-day.
- "People and Places", II

Like love we don't know where or why
Like love we can't compel or fly
Like love we often weep
Like love we seldom keep
- "People and Places", II

And children swarmed to him like settlers. He became a land.
- "People and Places", VII: "Edward Lear"

Evil is unspectacular and always human,
And shares our bed and eats at our own table.
- "People and Places", XIII: "Herman Melville"

The Godhead is broken like bread. We are the pieces.
- "People and Places", XIII: "Herman Melville"

As a rule,
It was the pleasure-haters who became unjust.
- "People and Places", XVII: "Voltaire at Ferney"
- First published in Poetry (June 1939)

And still all over Europe stood the horrible nurses
Itching to boil their children. Only his verses
Perhaps could stop them: He must go on working.
- "People and Places", XVII: "Voltaire at Ferney"

Lay your sleeping head, my love
Human on my faithless arm;
Time and fevers burn away
Individual beauty from
Thoughtful children, and the grave
Proves the child ephemeral;
But in my arms till break of day
Let the living creature lie:
Mortal, guilty, but to me
The entirely beautiful.
- "Lay Your Sleeping Head, My Love", st. 1

Every farthing of the cost,
All the dreaded cards foretell,
Shall be paid, but from this night
Not a whisper, not a thought,
Not a kiss nor look be lost.
- "Lay Your Sleeping Head, My Love", st. 3

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.
- "Musée des Beaux Arts", ll. 1–4 (December 1938)

They never forgot
That even the most dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
- "Musée des Beaux Arts", ll. 9–13

The expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
- "Musée des Beaux Arts", ll. 19–21

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.
I’ll love you till the ocean
   Is folded and hung up to dry
And the seven stars go squawking
   Like geese about the sky.
- "As I Walked Out One Evening", sts. 3–4

O plunge your hands in water,
   Plunge them in up to the wrist;
Stare, stare in the basin
   And wonder what you’ve missed.
The glacier knocks in the cupboard,
   The desert sighs in the bed,
And the crack in the tea cup opens
   A lane to the land of the dead.
- "As I Walked Out One Evening", sts. 10–11

Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after,
And the poetry he invented was easy to understand;
He knew human folly like the back of his hand,
And was greatly interested in armies and fleets;
When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,
And when he cried the little children died in the streets.
- "Epitaph on a Tyrant", ll. 5–6

Our researchers into Public Opinion are content
That he held the proper opinions for the time of year;
When there was peace, he was for peace; when there was war, he went.
- "The Unknown Citizen"

Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:
Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.
- "The Unknown Citizen"

He disappeared in the dead of winter:
The brooks were frozen, the airports almost deserted,
And snow disfigured the public statues;
The mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day.
What instruments we have agree
The day of his death was a dark cold day.
- "In Memory of W. B. Yeats", I, st. 1

By mourning tongues
The death of the poet was kept from his poems.
- "In Memory of W. B. Yeats", I, st. 2

When the brokers are roaring like beasts on the floor of the Bourse.
- "In Memory of W. B. Yeats", I, st. 5

Each in the cell of himself is almost convinced of his freedom.
- "In Memory of W. B. Yeats", I, st. 5

You were silly like us: your gift survived it all;
The parish of rich women, physical decay,
Yourself; mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.
Now Ireland has her madness and her weather still,
For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives
In the valley of its saying where executives
Would never want to tamper; it flows south
From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs,
Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives,
A way of happening, a mouth.
- "In Memory of W. B. Yeats", II

Earth, receive an honoured guest;
William Yeats is laid to rest.
Let the Irish vessel lie
Emptied of its poetry.
- "In Memory of W. B. Yeats", III, st. 1

Time that with this strange excuse
Pardoned Kipling and his views,
And will pardon Paul Claudel,
Pardons him for writing well.
- "In Memory of W. B. Yeats", III, st. 4

In the nightmare of the dark
All the dogs of Europe bark,
And the living nations wait,
Each sequestered in its hate;
Intellectual disgrace
Stares from every human face,
And the seas of pity lie
Locked and frozen in each eye.
- "In Memory of W. B. Yeats", III, sts. 5–6

In the deserts of the heart
Let the healing fountain start,
In the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to praise.
- "In Memory of W. B. Yeats", III, st. 9

An important Jew who died in exile.
- "In Memory of Sigmund Freud", st. 6

To us he is no more a person
Now but a whole climate of opinion.
- "In Memory of Sigmund Freud", st. 17

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.
- "In Memory of Sigmund Freud", st. 28

I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.
- "September 1, 1939", ll. 1–11

I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.
- "September 1, 1939", ll. 19–22

Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse.
- "September 1, 1939", ll. 34–39

For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.
- "September 1, 1939", ll. 62–66

All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.
- "September 1, 1939", ll. 78–88
- Last line amended in Oscar Williams (ed.) The New Pocket Anthology of American Verse (1955) p. 46: "We must love one another and die."

Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.
- "September 1, 1939", ll. 89–99

The Double Man · New Year Letter (1941)

New York: Random House · London: Faber and Faber

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.
- Note to l. 589

To the man-in-the-street, who, I'm sorry to say,
Is a keen observer of life,
The word 'Intellectual' suggests straight away
A man who's untrue to his wife.
- Note to l. 1,277

For the Time Being (1944)

New York: Random House

At Dirty Dick's and Sloppy Joe's
We drank our liquor straight,
Some went upstairs with Margery,
And some, alas, with Kate.
- "The Sea and the Mirror—Master and Boatswain"

My Dear One is mine as mirrors are lonely.
- "The Sea and the Mirror—Miranda"

Reason will be replaced by Revelation. Instead of Rational Law, objective truths perceptible to any who will undergo the necessary intellectual discipline, Knowledge will degenerate into a riot of subjective visions...Whole cosmogonies will be created out of some forgotten personal resentment, complete epics written in private languages, the daubs of schoolchildren ranked above the greatest masterpieces. Idealism will be replaced by Materialism. Life after death will be an eternal dinner party where all the guests are 20 years old...Justice will be replaced by Pity as the cardinal human virtue, and all fear of retribution will vanish...The New Aristocracy will consist exclusively of hermits, bums and permanent invalids. The Rough Diamond, the Consumptive Whore, the bandit who is good to his mother, the epileptic girl who has a way with animals will be the heroes and heroines of the New Age, when the general, the statesman, and the philosopher have become the butt of every farce and satire.
- "For the Time Being—The Massacre of the Innocents"

The Age of Anxiety (1948)

New York: Random House

Let us then
Consider rather the incessant Now of
The traveler through time, his tired mind
Biased towards bigness since his body must
Exaggerate to exist, possessed by hope.
- Prologue

Sob, heavy world,
Sob as you spin
Mantled in mist, remote from the happy.
- Pt. 4: The Dirge

We would rather be ruined than changed
We would rather die in our dread
Than climb the cross of the moment
And let our illusions die.
- Epilogue

Nones (1951)

New York: Random House

Unendowed with wealth or pity,
Little birds with scarlet legs
Sitting on their speckled eggs,
Eye each flu-infected city.
Altogether elsewhere, vast
Herds of reindeer move across
Miles and miles of golden moss,
Silently and very fast.
- "The Fall of Rome", sts. 6–7

In a national capital Mirabeau and his set
Attacked mystery; the packed galleries roared
And history marched to the drums of a clear idea,
The aim of the Rational City, quick to admire,
Quick to tire.
- "Memorial for the City", II, st. 7

There is no love;
There are only the various envies, all of them sad.
- "In Praise of Limestone", l. 58

... This land is not the sweet home that it looks,
Nor its peace the historical calm of a site
Where something was settled once and for all: A backward
And dilapidated province, connected
To the big busy world by a tunnel, with a certain
Seedy appeal.
- "In Praise of Limestone", l. 61

The Shield of Achilles (1955)

New York: Random House

She looked over his shoulder
   For vines and olive trees,
Marble well-governed cities
   And ships upon untamed seas,
But there on the shining metal
   His hands had put instead
An artificial wilderness
   And a sky like lead.
- "The Shield of Achilles", st. 1
- First published in Poetry (October 1952)

A million eyes, a million boots in line,
Without expression, waiting for a sign.
- "The Shield of Achilles", st. 2

Out of the air a voice without a face
Proved by statistics that some cause was just
In tones as dry and level as the place.
- "The Shield of Achilles", st. 3

The mass and majesty of this world, all
   That carries weight and always weighs the same
Lay in the hands of others; they were small
   And could not hope for help and no help came:
   What their foes like to do was done, their shame
Was all the worst could wish; they lost their pride
And died as men before their bodies died.
- "The Shield of Achilles", st. 6

That girls are raped, that two boys knife a third,
Were axioms to him, who'd never heard
Of any world where promises were kept
Or one could weep because another wept.
- "The Shield of Achilles", st. 8

The thin-lipped armorer,
   Hephaestos, hobbled away,
Thetis of the shining breasts
   Cried out in dismay
At what the god had wrought
   To please her son, the strong
Iron-hearted man-slaying Achilles
   Who would not live long.
- "The Shield of Achilles", st. 9

To save your world you asked this man to die;
Would this man, could he see you now, ask why?
- "Epitaph for the Unknown Soldier" (October 1953)

This great society is going to smash;
They cannot fool us with how fast they go,
How much they cost each other and the gods.
A culture is no better than its woods.
- "Bucolics", II: "Woods"

Homage to Clio (1960)

New York: Random House

How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.
- "The More Loving One", st. 2 (1957)

Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.
- "The More Loving One", st. 3

Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.
- "First Things First", st. 5

What reverence is rightly paid
To a divinity so odd
He lets the Adam whom he made
Perform the Acts of God?
- "Friday's Child", st. 4

The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays (1962)

New York: Random House

It is a sad fact about our culture that a poet can earn much more money writing or talking about his art than he can by practicing it.
- Foreword

Before people complain of the obscurity of modern poetry, they should first examine their consciences and ask themselves with how many people and on how many occasions they have genuinely and profoundly shared some experience with another; they might also ask themselves how much poetry of any period they can honestly say that they understand.
- "The Dyer's Hand"
- First published in The Listener (30 June 1955) p. 1,153

The surest sign that a man has a genuine taste of his own is that he is uncertain of it.
- "Reading"

In general, when reading a scholarly critic, one profits more from his quotations than from his comments.
- "Reading"

Some books are undeservedly forgotten; none are undeservedly remembered.
- "Reading"

One cannot review a bad book without showing off.
- "Reading"

At first critics classified authors as Ancients, that is to say, Greek and Latin authors, and Moderns, that is to say, every post-Classical Author. Then they classified them by eras, the Augustans, the Victorians, etc., and now they classify them by decades, the writers of the '30's, '40's, etc. Very soon, it seems, they will be labeling authors, like automobiles, by the year.
- "Reading"

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.
- "Writing"

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

How happy the lot of the mathematician! He is judged solely by his peers, and the standard is so high that no colleague or rival can ever win a reputation he does not deserve. No cashier writes a letter to the press complaining about the incomprehensibility of Modern Mathematics and comparing it unfavorably with the good old days when mathematicians were content to paper irregularly shaped rooms and fill bathtubs without closing the waste pipe.
- "Writing"

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.
- "Writing"

In the course of many centuries a few laborsaving devices have been introduced into the mental kitchen — alcohol, coffee, tobacco, Benzedrine, etc. — but these are very crude, constantly breaking down, and liable to injure the cook. Literary composition in the twentieth century A.D. is pretty much what it was in the twentieth century B.C.: nearly everything has still to be done by hand.
- "Writing"

Some writers confuse authenticity, which they ought always to aim at, with originality, which they should never bother about.
- "Writing"

Slavery is so intolerable a condition that the slave can hardly escape deluding himself into thinking that he is choosing to obey his master’s commands when, in fact, he is obliged to. Most slaves of habit suffer from this delusion and so do some writers, enslaved by an all too "personal" style.
- "Writing"

It takes little talent to see clearly what lies under one's nose, a good deal of it to know in which direction to point that organ.
- "Writing"

The old lady, quoted by E. M. Forster — "How can I know what I think till I see what I say?"
- "Writing"

Rhymes, meters, stanza forms, etc., are like servants. If the master is fair enough to win their affection and firm enough to command their respect, the result is an orderly happy household. If he is too tyrannical, they give notice; if he lacks authority, they become slovenly, impertinent, drunk and dishonest.
- "Writing"

The poet who writes "free" verse is like Robinson Crusoe on his desert island: he must do all his cooking, laundry and darning for himself. In a few exceptional cases, this manly independence produces something original and impressive, but more often the result is squalor — dirty sheets on the unmade bed and empty bottles on the unswept floor.
- "Writing"

"The unacknowledged legislators of the world" describes the secret police, not the poets.
- "Writing"

The condition of mankind is, and always has been, so miserable and depraved that, if anyone were to say to the poet: "For God's sake stop singing and do something useful like putting on the kettle or fetching bandages," what just reason could he give for refusing? But nobody says this. The self-appointed unqualified nurse says: "You are to sing the patient a song which will make him believe that I, and I alone, can cure him. If you can't or won't, I shall confiscate your passport and send you to the mines." And the poor patient in his delirium cries: "Please sing me a song which will give me sweet dreams instead of nightmares. If you succeed, I will give you a penthouse in New York or a ranch in Arizona."
- "Writing"

Speaking for myself, the questions which interest me most when reading a poem are two. The first is technical: "Here is a verbal contraption. How does it work?" The second is, in the broadest sense, moral: "What kind of a guy inhabits this poem? What is his notion of the good life or the good place? His notion of the Evil One? What does he conceal from the reader? What does he conceal even from himself?"
- "Making, Knowing and Judging"

Whatever its actual content and overt interest, every poem is rooted in imaginative awe. Poetry can do a hundred and one things, delight, sadden, disturb, amuse, instruct — it may express every possible shade of emotion, and describe every conceivable kind of event, but there is only one thing that all poetry must do; it must praise all it can for being and for happening.
- "Making, Knowing and Judging"

Without Art, we should have no notion of the sacred; without Science, we should always worship false gods.
- "The Virgin & The Dynamo"

The true men of action in our time, those who transform the world, are not the politicians and statesmen, but the scientists. Unfortunately poetry cannot celebrate them, because their deeds are concerned with things, not persons, and are, therefore, speechless.
When I find myself in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a drawing room full of dukes.
- "The Poet & The City"

What the mass media offer is not popular art, but entertainment which is intended to be consumed like food, forgotten, and replaced by a new dish. This is bad for everyone; the majority lose all genuine taste of their own, and the minority become cultural snobs.
- "The Poet & The City"

All poets adore explosions, thunderstorms, tornadoes, conflagrations, ruins, scenes of spectacular carnage. The poetic imagination is not at all a desirable quality in a statesman.
- "The Poet & The City"

Every autobiography is concerned with two characters, a Don Quixote, the Ego, and a Sancho Panza, the Self.
- "Hic et Ille"

History is, strictly speaking, the study of questions; the study of answers belongs to anthropology and sociology.
- "Hic et Ille"

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.
- "Hic et Ille"

One of the most horrible, yet most important, discoveries of our age has been that, if you really wish to destroy a person and turn him into an automaton, the surest method is not physical torture, in the strict sense, but simply to keep him awake, i.e., in an existential relation to life without intermission.
- "Hic et Ille"

When I consider others I can easily believe that their bodies express their personalities and that the two are inseparable. But it is impossible for me not to feel that my body is other than I, that I inhabit it like a house, and that my face is a mask which, with or without my consent, conceals my real nature from others.
- "Hic et Ille"

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.
- "Hic et Ille"

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.
- "Hic et Ille"

Literary confessors are contemptible, like beggars who exhibit their sores for money, but not so contemptible as the public that buys their books.
- "Hic et Ille"

Between friends differences in taste or opinion are irritating in direct proportion to their triviality.
- "Hic et Ille"

To have a sense of sin means to feel guilty at there being an ethical choice to make, a guilt which, however "good" I may become, remains unchanged.
- "The Guilty Vicarage"
- First published in Harper's Magazine (May 1948)

The detective must be either the official representative of the ethical or the exceptional individual who is in a state of grace.
- "The Guilty Vicarage"

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.
- "The Guilty Vicarage"

Perhaps there is only one cardinal sin: impatience. Because of impatience we were driven out of Paradise, because of impatience we cannot return.
- "The I Without a Self"

The law cannot forgive, for the law has not been wronged, only broken; only persons can be wronged. The law can pardon, but it can only pardon what it has the power to punish.
- "The Prince's Dog"

All wishes, whatever their apparent content, have the same and unvarying meaning: "I refuse to be what I am."
- "Interlude: West's Disease"

All pity is self-pity.
- "Interlude: West's Disease"

In societies with fewer opportunities for amusement, it was also easier to tell a mere wish from a real desire. If, in order to hear some music, a man has to wait for six months and then walk twenty miles, it is easy to tell whether the words, "I should like to hear some music," mean what they appear to mean, or merely, "At this moment I should like to forget myself." When all he has to do is press a switch, it is more difficult. He may easily come to believe that wishes can come true.
- "Interlude: West's Disease"

Man is a history-making creature who can neither repeat his past nor leave it behind.
- "D. H. Lawrence"

Of all possible subjects, travel is the most difficult for an artist, as it is the easiest for a journalist.
- "The American Scene"

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.
- "Postscript: Rome v. Monticello"

To some degree every American poet feels that the whole responsibility for contemporary poetry has fallen upon his shoulders, that he is a literary aristocracy of one.
- "American Poetry"

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.
- "Notes on the Comic"

A vice in common can be the ground of a friendship but not a virtue in common. X and Y may be friends because they are both drunkards or womanizers but, if they are both sober and chaste, they are friends for some other reason.
- "Don Juan"

No human being is innocent, but there is a class of innocent human actions called Games.
- "Dingly Dell & The Fleet"

Unfortunately for the modern dramatist, during the past century and a half the public realm has been less and less of a realm where human deeds are done, and more and more of a realm of mere human behavior. The contemporary dramatist has lost his natural subject.
- "Genius & Apostle"

When one looks into the window of a store which sells devotional art objects, one can't help wishing the iconoclasts had won.
- "Postscript: Christianity & Art"

A verbal art like poetry is reflective; it stops to think. Music is immediate, it goes on to become.
- "Notes on Music and Opera"

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.
- "Notes on Music and Opera"

If music in general is an imitation of history, opera in particular is an imitation of human willfulness; it is rooted in the fact that we not only have feelings but insist upon having them at whatever cost to ourselves. ... The quality common to all the great operatic roles, e.g., Don Giovanni, Norma, Lucia, Tristan, Isolde, Brünnhilde, is that each of them is a passionate and willful state of being. In real life they would all be bores, even Don Giovanni.
- "Notes on Music and Opera"

Drama is based on the Mistake. I think someone is my friend when he really is my enemy, that I am free to marry a woman when in fact she is my mother, that this person is a chambermaid when it is a young nobleman in disguise, that this well-dressed young man is rich when he is really a penniless adventurer, or that if I do this such and such a result will follow when in fact it results in something very different. All good drama has two movements, first the making of the mistake, then the discovery that it was a mistake.
- "Notes on Music and Opera"

No opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible.
- "Notes on Music and Opera"

If the most significant characteristic of man is the complex of biological needs he shares with all members of his species, then the best lives for the writer to observe are those in which the role of natural necessity is clearest, namely, the lives of the very poor.
- "Cav & Pag"

Any one who attempts to translate from one tongue into another will know moods of despair when he feels he is wasting his time upon an impossible task. But, irrespective of success or failure, the mere attempt can teach a writer much about his own language which he would find it hard to learn elsewhere.
- "Translating Opera Libretti"

About the House (1965)

New York: Random House

Some thirty inches from my nose
The frontier of my Person goes,
And all the untilled air between
Is private pagus or demesne.
Stranger, unless with bedroom eyes
I beckon you to fraternize,
Beware of rudely crossing it:
I have no gun, but I can spit.
- "Prologue: The Birth of Architecture"

Lifted off the potty,
Infants from their mothers
Hear their first impartial
Words of wordly praise:
Hence, to start the morning
With a satisfactory
Dump is a good omen
All our adult days.
- "Thanksgiving for a Habitat", VI: "The Geography of the House"

Brains evolved after bowels, therefore,
Great assets as fine raiment and good looks
can be on festive occasions,
they are not essential like artful cooks
and stalwart digestions.
- "Thanksgiving for a Habitat", X: "Tonight at Seven-Thirty"

   Don Juan needs no bed, being far too impatient to undress,
nor do Tristan and Isolde, much too in love to care
   for so mundane a matter, but unmythical
mortals require one, and prefer to take their clothes off,
   if only to sleep
- "Thanksgiving for a Habitat", XI: "The Cave of Nakedness"

Some perks belong, though
   to all unwilling celibates: our rooms are seldom
battlefields, we enjoy the pleasure of reading in bed
   (as we grow older, it's true, we may find it prudent
to get nodding drunk first), we retain the light
   to choose our sacred image.
- "Thanksgiving for a Habitat", XI: "The Cave of Nakedness"

God bless the U.S.A., so large,
So friendly, and so rich.
- "On the Circuit", st. 16

When a just man dies,
Lamentation and praise,
Sorrow and joy, are one.
- "Elegy for J.F.K." (22 November 1963)

Marriage is rarely bliss
But, surely it would be worse
As particles to pelt
At thousands of miles per sec
About a universe
In which a lover's kiss
Would either not be felt
Or break the loved one's neck.
- "After Reading a Child's Guide to Modern Physics", st. 2
- First published in The New Yorker (17 November 1962)

City Without Walls, and Other Poems (1969)

New York: Random House

Americans—like omelets:
there is no such thing
as a pretty good one.
- "Marginalia", IV

Thoughts of his own death,
like the distant roll
of thunder at a picnic.
- "Marginalia", V

The Ogre does what ogres can,
Deeds quite impossible for Man,
But one prize is beyond his reach,
The Ogre cannot master Speech:
About a subjugated plain,
Among its desperate and slain,
The Ogre stalks with hands on hips,
While drivel gushes from his lips.
- "August 1968"

Can sixty make sense to sixteen-Plus?
What has my camp in common with theirs,
With buttons and beards and Be-Ins?
Much, I hope. In Acts it is written
Taste was no problem at Pentecost.
- "Prologue at Sixty"

A Certain World: A Commonplace Book (1970)

New York: The Viking Press

Of course, Behaviorism "works." So does torture. Give me a no-nonsense, down-to-earth behaviorist, a few drugs, and simple electrical appliances, and in six months I will have him reciting the Athanasian Creed in public.
- "Behaviorism"

The countenances of children, like those of animals, are masks, not faces, for they have not yet developed a significant profile of their own.
- "Face, The Human"

Christmas and Easter can be subjects for poetry, but Good Friday, like Auschwitz, cannot. The reality is so horrible, it is not surprising that people should have found it a stumbling block to faith.
- "Friday, Good"

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?
- "God"

All sin tends to be addictive, and the terminal point of addiction is what is called damnation.
- "Hell"

Proper names are poetry in the raw. Like all poetry they are untranslatable.
- "Names, Proper"

We are not commanded (or forbidden) to love our mates, our children, our friends, our country because such affections come naturally to us and are good in themselves, although we may corrupt them. We are commanded to love our neighbor because our "natural" attitude toward the "other" is one of either indifference or hostility.
- "Neighbor, Love of One's"

Like everything which is not the involuntary result of fleeting emotion but the creation of time and will, any marriage, happy or unhappy, is infinitely more interesting and significant than any romance, however passionate.
- "Marriage"

A doctor, like anyone else who has to deal with human beings, each of them unique, cannot be a scientist; he is either, like the surgeon, a craftsman, or, like the physician and the psychologist, an artist. ... This means that in order to be a good doctor a man must also have a good character, that is to say, whatever weaknesses and foibles he may have, he must love his fellow human beings in the concrete and desire their good before his own.
- "Medicine"

I see little hope for a peaceful world until men are excluded from the realm of foreign policy altogether and all decisions concerning international relations are reserved for women, preferably married ones.
- "Penis Rivalry"

To pray is to pay attention to something or someone other than oneself. Whenever a man so concentrates his attention — on a landscape, a poem, a geometrical problem, an idol, or the True God — that he completely forgets his own ego and desires, he is praying. ... The primary task of the schoolteacher is to teach children, in a secular context, the technique of prayer.
- "Prayer, Nature of"

The belief that politics can be scientific must inevitably produce tyrannies. Politics cannot be a science, because in politics theory and practice cannot be separated, and the sciences depend upon their separation. ... Empirical politics must be kept in bounds by democratic institutions, which leave it up to the subjects of the experiment to say whether it shall be tried, and to stop it if they dislike it, because, in politics, there is a distinction, unknown to science, between Truth and Justice.
- "Tyranny"

It is already possible to imagine a society in which the majority of the population, that is to say, its laborers, will have almost as much leisure as in earlier times was enjoyed by the aristocracy. When one recalls how aristocracies in the past actually behaved, the prospect is not cheerful.
- "Work, Labor, and Play"

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.
- "Work, Labor, and Play"

I cannot accept the doctrine that in poetry there is a "suspension of belief." A poet must never make a statement simply because it sounds poetically exciting; he must also believe it to be true.
- "Writing"

Epistle to a Godson, and Other Poems (1972)

New York: Random House

It's natural the Boys should whoop it up for
so huge a phallic triumph, an adventure
it would not have occurred to women
to think worth while, made possible only
because we like huddling in gangs and knowing
the exact time.
- "Moon Landing", sts. 1–2 (1969)

A grand gesture. But what does it period?
What does it osse? We were always adroiter
   with objects than lives, and more facile
   at courage than kindness: from the moment
the first flint was flaked this landing was merely
a matter of time. But our selves, like Adam's,
   still don't fit us exactly, modern
   only in this—our lack of decorum.
- "Moon Landing", sts. 3–4

A poet's hope: to be,
like some valley cheese,
local, but prized elsewhere.
- "Shorts I", no. 1

"Healing,"
Papa would tell me,
"is not a science,
but the intuitive art
of wooing Nature."
- "The Art of Healing", st. 2

The Art of Poetry No. 17 (Autumn 1972)

Interview by Michael Newman for The Paris Review, no. 57 (Spring 1974)

Normally, when one passes someone on the street who is in pain, one either tries to help him, or one simply looks the other way. With a photo there's no human decision; you're not there; you can't turn away; you simply gape. It's a form of voyeurism.
- p. 247

It's frightfully important for a writer to be his age, not to be younger or older than he is. One might ask, "What should I write at the age of sixty-four," but never, "What should I write in 1940."
- p. 250

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.
- p. 251

I never write when I'm drunk. Why should one need aids? The Muse is a high-spirited girl who doesn't like to be brutally or coarsely wooed. And she doesn't like slavish devotion — then she lies.
- p. 254

I don't think the mystical experience can be verbalized. When the ego disappears, so does power over language.
- p. 266

Forewords and Afterwords (1973)

New York: Random House

A god who is both self-sufficient and content to remain so could not interest us enough to raise the question of his existence.
- "The Greeks and Us"
- From The Portable Greek Reader (1948)

The truly tragic kind of suffering is the kind produced and defiantly insisted upon by the hero himself so that, instead of making him better, it makes him worse and when he dies he is not reconciled to the law but defiant, that is, damned. Lear is not a tragic hero, Othello is.
- "The Greeks and Us"

Man...always acts either self-loving, just for the hell of it, or God-loving, just for the heaven of it; his reasons, his appetites are secondary motivations. Man chooses either life or death, but he chooses; everything he does, from going to the toilet to mathematical speculation, is an act of religious worship, either of God or of himself.
Lastly by the classical apotheosis of Man-God, Augustine opposes the Christian belief in Jesus Christ, the God-Man. The former is a Hercules who compels recognition by the great deeds he does in establishing for the common people in the law, order and prosperity they cannot establish for themselves, by his manifestation of superior power; the latter reveals to fallen man that God is love by suffering, i.e. by refusing to compel recognition, choosing instead to be a victim of man's self-love. The idea of a sacrificial victim is not new; but that it should be the victim who chooses to be sacrificed, and the sacrificers who deny that any sacrifice has been made, is very new.
- "Augustus to Augustine"

The basic stimulus to the intelligence is doubt, a feeling that the meaning of an experience is not self-evident.
- "The Protestant Mystics"

Whatever the field under discussion, those who engage in debate must not only believe in each other's good faith, but also in their capacity to arrive at the truth.
- "The Protestant Mystics"

I may want to sleep with Miss America, but I have no wish to hear her talk about herself and her family.
- "The Protestant Mystics"

The mystics themselves do not seem to have believed their physical and mental sufferings to be a sign of grace, but it is unfortunate that it is precisely physical manifestations which appeal most to the religiosity of the mob. A woman might spend twenty years nursing lepers without having any notice taken of her, but let her once exhibit the stigmata or live for long periods on nothing but the Host and water, and in no time the crowd will be clamoring for her beatification.
- "The Protestant Mystics"

In the late Middle Ages there were, no doubt, many persons in monasteries and convents who had no business there and should have been out in the world earning an honest living, but today it may very well be that there are many persons trying to earn a living in the world and driven by failure into mental homes whose true home would be the cloister.
- "The Protestant Mystics"

He suffers from one great literary defect, which is often found in lonely geniuses: he never knows when to stop. Lonely people are apt to fall in love with the sound of their own voice, as Narcissus fell in love with his reflection, not out of conceit but out of despair of finding another who will listen and respond.
- "A Knight of Doleful Countenance"
- On Søren Kierkegaard

I do not believe an artist's life throws much light upon his works. I do believe, however, that, more often than most people realize, his works may throw light upon his life. An artist with certain imaginative ideas in his head may then involve himself in relationships which are congenial to them.
- "The Greatest of the Monsters"

A craftsman knows in advance what the finished result will be, while the artist knows only what it will be when he has finished it. But it is unbecoming in an artist to talk about inspiration; that is the reader's business.
- "A Poet of the Actual"

Money is the necessity that frees us from necessity. Of all novelists in any country, Trollope best understands the role of money. Compared with him even Balzac is a romantic.
- "A Poet of the Actual"

Machines have no political opinions, but they have profound political effects. They demand a strict regimentation of time, and, by abolishing the need for manual skill, have transformed the majority of the population from workers into laborers. There are, that is to say, fewer and fewer jobs which a man can find a pride and satisfaction in doing well, more and more which have no interest in themselves and can be valued only for the money they provide.
- "A Russian Aesthete"

In most poetic expressions of patriotism, it is impossible to distinguish what is one of the greatest human virtues from the worst human vice, collective egotism.
The virtue of patriotism has been extolled most loudly and publicly by nations that are in the process of conquering others, by the Roman, for example, in the first century B.C., the French in the 1790s, the English in the nineteenth century, and the Germans in the first half of the twentieth. To such people, love of one's country involves denying the right of others, of the Gauls, the Italians, the Indians, the Poles, to love theirs.
- "C. P. Cavafy"

Most people call something profound, not because it is near some important truth but because it is distant from ordinary life. Thus, darkness is profound to the eye, silence to the ear; what-is-not is the profundity of what-is.
- "Un Homme d'Esprit"

Young people, who are still uncertain of their identity, often try on a succession of masks in the hope of finding the one which suits them — the one, in fact, which is not a mask.
- "One of the Family"

Most people are even less original in their dreaming than in their waking life; their dreams are more monotonous than their thoughts and oddly enough, more literary.
- "Walter de la Mare"

In all technologically "advanced" countries, fashion has replaced tradition, so that involuntary membership in a society can no longer provide a feeling of community.
- "Lame Shadows"

It is...axiomatic that we should all think of ourselves as being more sensitive than other people because, when we are insensitive in our dealings with others, we cannot be aware of it at the time: conscious insensitivity is a self-contradiction.
- "Markings"
- Dag Hammarskjöld's Markings (1964)

In any modern city, a great deal of our energy has to be expended in not seeing, not hearing, not smelling. An inhabitant of New York who possessed the sensory acuteness of an African Bushman would very soon go mad.
- "The Justice of Dame Kind"

One can only blaspheme if one believes.
- "Concerning the Unpredictable"

Murder is commoner among cooks than among the members of any other profession.
- "The Kitchen of Life"

Genealogies are admirable things, provided they do not encourage the curious delusion that some families are older than others.
- "As It Seemed to Us"

The Table Talk of W. H. Auden (1991)

Compiled by Alan Ansen · Edited by Nicholas Jenkins

The actors today really need the whip hand. They're so lazy. They haven't got the sense of pride in their profession that the less socially elevated musical comedy and music hall people or acrobats have. The theater has never been any good since the actors became gentlemen.
- 16 November 1946

It's impossible to represent a saint. It becomes boring. Perhaps because he is, like the Saturday Evening Post people, in the position of having almost infinitely free will.
- 16 November 1946

Criticism should be a casual conversation.
- 16 November 1946

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.
- 16 November 1946

Anyone who has a child today should train him to be either a physicist or a ballet dancer. Then he'll escape.
- 15 January 1947

There's only one good test of pornography. Get twelve normal men to read the book, and then ask them, "Did you get an erection?" If the answer is "Yes" from a majority of the twelve, then the book is pornographic.
- 17 March 1947

You have to see the sex act comically, as a child.
- 17 March 1947

Sexual fidelity is more important in a homosexual relationship than in any other. In other relationships there are a variety of ties. But here, fidelity is the only bond.
- 20 October 1947

The only way to spend New Year's Eve is either quietly with friends or in a brothel. Otherwise when the evening ends and people pair off, someone is bound to be left in tears.
- 31 December 1947

What people don't realize is that intimacy has its conventions as well as ordinary social intercourse. There are three cardinal rules — don't take somebody else's boyfriend unless you've been specifically invited to do so, don't take a drink without being asked and keep a scrupulous accounting in financial matters.
- 31 December 1947

You know there are no secrets in America. It's quite different in England, where people think of a secret as a shared relation between two people.
- 16 March 1948

Attributed

Art is born of humiliation.
- In Stephen Spender, World Within World (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1951) ch. 2, p. 52

A real book reads us.
- In Lionel Trilling, "On the Modern Element in Modern Literature", Partisan Review (January–February 1961) p. 15: "taking the cue of W. H. Auden's remark that a real book reads us, I have been read by Eliot's poems." Reprinted in Beyond Culture (1965) p. 8. Amplified by Robie Macauley, Review of Trilling's Beyond Culture in The New York Times Book Review (14 November 1965) p. 38: "I must borrow a phrase from Mr. Trilling (who borrows it from W. H. Auden): a real book is not one that we read but one that reads us." Macauley's version repeated in Evan Esar (ed.) 20,000 Quips & Quotes (1968) p. 87 (with a comma after "we read"). Other variations: (e.g. "not one that's read" for "not one that we read")

As a poet—not as a citizen—there is only one political duty, and that is to defend one's language from corruption. When it’s corrupted, people lose faith in what they hear, and this leads to violence.
- In TIME (1 November 1971) p. 32, col. 3

My face looks like a wedding-cake left out in the rain.
- In Charles Osborne, W. H. Auden: The Life of a Poet (London: Methuen, 1980) p. 330 · Humphrey Carpenter, W. H. Auden: A Biography (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Co, 1981) pt. 2, ch. 6, p. 423

Misattributed

Love each other or perish.
- Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie (New York: Doubleday, 1997) p. 69. Misquoting "September 1, 1939" (see above)

Now is the age of anxiety.
- Paul McFedries, Word Spy: The Word Lover's Guide to Modern Culture (New York: Broadway Books, 2004) ch. 4, p. 58. Amplifying the title of Auden's long poem The Age of Anxiety (1947). Compare: Douglas Bush, Engaged & Disengaged (1966) p. 18

We are all on earth to help others. What on earth the others are here for, I can't imagine.
- This quotation has been traced to John Foster Hall (1867–1945), an English comedian known as "The Reverend Vivian Foster, Vicar of Mirth". See: Edward Mendelson, "'We are all here on earth to help others...'", audensociety.org (n.d.)

A professor is one who talks in someone else's sleep.
- Attributed in Evan Esar and Nicolas Bentley, The Treasury of Humorous Quotations (1951). Auden was repeating an anonymous joke and did not claim to have originated it. See: Edward Mendelson, "Who Wrote Auden's Definition of a Professor?", audensociety.org (May 2013)

Minus times minus equals plus,
The reason for this we need not discuss.
- A "math mnemonic" Auden memorized as a schoolboy, and often repeated in adulthood. Reported in Paul Fussell, "The Poet Himself", The New York Times (4 October 1981) sec. 7, p. 1

Music is the best means we have of digesting time.
- A quotation from Igor Stravinsky, not Auden. Attributed to Auden through a misreading of a paragraph in Robert Craft's Stravinsky: Chronicle of a Friendship (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972) p. 6 (The antecedent of "he" is unmistakably "Mr. S." in Craft's sentence: "He also makes a marvelous remark to the effect that 'Music is the best means we have of digesting time'"; and in the sentence that follows "he" is again Stravinsky, not Auden)

Death is the sound of distant thunder at a picnic.
- Simpson's Contemporary Quotations (1988) p. 219. Misquoting "Marginalia", V (see above)

No person can be a great leader unless he takes genuine joy in the successes of those under him.
- Not by Auden; sources from the 1980s attribute it to the Rev. W. A. Nance (the name seems to have been confused with Auden's)

Water is the soul of the earth.
- Also attributed to Lucy Larcom: "150 Quotes About Water", positivethinkingmind.com (n.d.)

Quotes about Auden

In a century of the symbolist, surreal, and absurd, W. H. Auden is essentially a poet of the reasonable.
- James D. Brophy, W. H. Auden (Columbia University Press, 1970). Quoted in Frank S. Pepper, Dictionary of Biographical Quotations (Sphere Reference, 1985) p. 20

Spain is a hundred line poem from Auden; it is good medium Auden in a good cause — the Spanish Medical Aid. The Marxian theory of history does not go very happily into verse, but the conclusion is very fine.
- Cyril Connolly, "To-Day the Struggle", in New Statesman & Nation (5 June 1937). Reprinted in Valentine Cunningham, Spanish Front: Writers on the Civil War (Oxford University Press, 1986) p. 325

We have one poet of genius in Auden who is able to write prolifically, carelessly and exquisitely, nor does he seem to have to pay any price for his inspiration. It is as if he worked under the influence of some mysterious drug, which presents him with a private vision, a mastery of form and vocabulary.
- Cyril Connolly, Enemies of Promise (1938). Quoted in Frank S. Pepper, Handbook of 20th Century Quotations (London: Sphere Books, 1984) p. 33

The poet Auden said, "Thousands have lived without love; none without water." Ninety-seven percent of Earth's water is ocean. No blue, no green. If you think the ocean isn't important, imagine Earth without it. Mars comes to mind. No ocean, no life support system.
- Sylvia Earle, "My Wish: Protect Our Oceans" (2009 TED talk)

Auden is something of an intellectual jackdaw, picking up bright pebbles of ideas so as to fit them into exciting conceptual patterns.
- Richard Hoggart, W. H. Auden (British Council and the National Book League, 1957) p. 8. Quoted in Justin Wintle and Richard Kenin, The Dictionary of Biographical Quotation of British and American subjects (Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978) p. 36

W. H. Auden's poem, Spain, is fit to stand beside great predecessors in its moving, yet serene expression of contemporary feeling towards the heart-rending events of the political world. The theme of the poem lies in the comparison between the secular achievements of the past and the hope which is possible for the future with the horrors of the present and the sacrifices which perhaps it demands from those of this generation who think and feel rightly.
- John Maynard Keynes, "British Foreign Policy", New Statesman (10 July 1937). Reprinted in Stephen Howe, Lines of Dissent: Writings from the New Statesman, 1913–1988 (Verso Books, 1988)

As the poet W. H. Auden wrote: "Truth, like love and sleep, resents/Approaches that are too intense." I call this Auden's rule.
- Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma (2014)

His satire has been criticized at times as irresponsible : this is to misunderstand its motive and aim: in so far as it proceeds from the life of one social class, a class which has lost its responsibility and civilizing impetus, the terms of this satire are bound to be superficially irresponsible. But no contemporary writing shows so clearly the revulsion of the artist from a society which can no longer support him, his need to identify himself with a class that can provide for his imagination.
- Cecil Day-Lewis, in New Verse magazine (November 1937). Quoted in Robin Skelton, Poetry of the Thirties (Penguin Books, 1963)

He is all ice and woodenfaced acrobatics.
- Wyndham Lewis, Blasting and Bombardiering (1937). Quoted in Justin Wintle and Richard Kenin, The Dictionary of Biographical Quotation of British and American subjects (1978) p. 37

Wystan Auden read us some of his new poem in the evening...I follow Auden in his derision of patriotism, class distinctions, comfort, and all the ineptitudes of the middle-classes. But when he also derides the other soft little harmless things which make my life comfortable, I feel a chill autumn wind. I feel that were I a communist the type of person whom I should most wish to attack would not be the millionaire or the imperialist, but the soft, reasonable, tolerant, secure, self-satisfied intellectuals like Vita and myself. A man like Auden with his fierce repudiation of half-way houses and his gentle integrity makes one feel terribly discontented with one’s own smug successfulness. I go to bed feeling terribly Edwardian and back-number, and yet, thank God, delighted that people like Wystan Auden should actually exist.
- Harold Nicolson, Diary, 4 August 1933. Quoted in Justin Wintle and Richard Kenin, The Dictionary of Biographical Quotation of British and American subjects (1978) p. 37 and in Ruth Winstone, Events, Dear Boy, Events: A Political Diary of Britain 1921–2010 (Profile Books, 2012)

I really wrote in his (Auden's) style. I was crazy about him. I loved his poems so much that I was using this British language all the time—I was saying trousers and subaltern and things like that. You understand I was a Bronx kid. We went through a few poems, and he kept asking me, do you really talk like that? And I kept saying, Oh yeah, well, sometimes. That was the great thing I learned from Auden: that you’d better talk your own language. Then I asked him what young writers now ask me—and I always tell them this story—I said to Auden, Well, do you think I should keep writing? He laughed and then became very solemn. If you’re a writer, he said, you’ll keep writing no matter what. That’s not a question a writer should ask. Something like that, not exactly, but close.
- Grace Paley, interviewed by Jonathan Dee, Barbara Jones and Larissa MacFarquhar, "Grace Paley, The Art of Fiction No. 131", The Paris Review, No. 124 (Fall 1992)

He proclaimed so diminished a scope for poetry, including mine. I had little use for his beginnings and middles. Yet he was one of the masters.
- Adrienne Rich What Is Found There (2003)

In terms of English and American poets, it would be quite just to call this The Age of Auden. Not only because Auden was such a dominant and successful poet, but because he went through all the contradictory ideological phases, from Marx to God. He really is representative in that sense.
- Karl Shapiro, interviewed by Robert Phillips, "The Art of Poetry No. 36", The Paris Review, No. 99 (Spring 1986)

I sometimes think of Auden's poetry as a hygiene, a knowledge and practice, based on a brilliantly prejudiced analysis of contemporary disorders, relating to the preservation and promotion of health, a sanitary science and a flusher of melancholies. I sometimes think of his poetry as a great war, admire intensely the mature, religious, and logical fighter, and deprecate the boy bushranger.
- Dylan Thomas, in New Verse magazine (November 1937). Quoted in Robin, Skelton, Poetry of the Thirties (Penguin Books, 1963) and in Robert Hampson and Peter Barry, New British Poetries: The Scope of the Possible (Manchester University Press, 1995)

Auden was a religious poet in the nature of Herbert-is of this guy shambling along somewhere down lower Manhattan, almost looking like a bum in the way that he's going by, but containing within him a tremendous concern for others. All those big words. Auden could write them because he was a great poet. He could write Pity with a capital "P," and he could write Justice, and the Just. Maybe the authority to write of such emotions and qualities with a capital letter is gone now. But Auden was entitled to do it, and he believed in doing it.
- Derek Walcott, 1993 interview collected in William Baer (ed.) Conversations with Derek Walcott (1996)

External links

Encyclopedic article on W. H. Auden on Wikipedia