Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
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
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
W. H. Auden
Age: 66 †
Born: 1907
Born: February 21
Died: 1973
Died: September 28
Author
Composer
Essayist
Librettist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Playwright
Poet
Screenwriter
University Teacher
Writer
Jórvík
Wystan Hugh Auden
Wystan Auden
Wystan H Auden
W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
Men
Buttons
Poetic
Bombs
Slaying
Pushing
Releases
Release
Dragon
Poet
Button
Write
Bomb
Writing
Dragons
More quotes by W. H. Auden
Caesar's double-bed is warm As an unimportant clerk Writes i do not like my work On a pink official form.
W. H. Auden
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
The definition of prayer is paying careful and concentrated attention to something other than your own constructions.
W. H. Auden
The friends who met here and embraced are gone, Each to his own mistake.
W. H. Auden
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
It is, for example, 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.
W. H. Auden
A writer is a maker, not a man of action: his private life is of no concern to anybody but himself, his family and his friends.
W. H. Auden
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.
W. H. Auden
The nightingales are sobbing in The orchards of our mothers, And hearts that we broke long ago Have long been breaking others Tears are round, the sea is deep: Roll them overboard and sleep.
W. H. Auden
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
I smell blood and an era of prominent madmen.
W. H. Auden
One of the troubles of our times is that we are all, I think, precocious as personalities and backward as characters.
W. H. Auden
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.
W. H. Auden
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 from the rafters Dance, dance, dance till you drop.
W. H. Auden
the child unlucky in his little State, Some hearth where freedom is excluded, A hive whose honey is fear and worry, Feels calmer now and somehow assured of escape
W. H. Auden
Behind you swiftly the figure comes softly, The spot on your skin is a shocking disease.
W. H. Auden
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
Anyone who has a child today should train him to be either a physicist or a ballet dancer. Then he'll escape.
W. H. Auden
A tremendous number of people in America work very hard at something that bores them. Even a rich man thinks he has to go down to the office everyday. Not because he likes it but because he can't think of anything else to do.
W. H. Auden
If equal affection cannot be, let the more loving be me.
W. H. Auden
