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Literary Historian Inspirational Quotes (5894)

Page 9 of 246
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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.
W. H. Auden
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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.
W. H. Auden
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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.
W. H. Auden
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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.
W. H. Auden
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By mourning tongues The death of the poet was kept from his poems.
W. H. Auden
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God bless the USA, so large, so friendly, and so rich.
W. H. Auden
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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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All wishes, whatever their apparent content, have the same and unvarying meaning: I refuse to be what I am.
W. H. Auden
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In life the loser's score is always zero.
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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A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us.
W. H. Auden
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A god who is both self-sufficient and content to remain so could not interest us enough to raise the question of his existence.
W. H. Auden
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Time will say nothing but I told you so.
W. H. Auden
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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.
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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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
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In times of joy, all of us wished we possessed a tail we could wag.
W. H. Auden
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Yet no one hears his own remarks as prose.
W. H. Auden
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No good opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible.
W. H. Auden
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All sins tend to be addictive, and the terminal point of addiction is damnation.
W. H. Auden
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A poet feels the impulse to create a work of art when the passive awe provoked by an event is transformed into a desire to express that awe in a rite of worship.
W. H. Auden
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If equal affection cannot be, let the more loving be me.
W. H. Auden
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Out on the lawn I lie in bed, Vega conspicuous overhead.
W. H. Auden
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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
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