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

W. H. Auden

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W. H. Auden
Age: 66 †
Born: 1907
Born: February 21
Died: 1973
Died: September 28
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Literary Critic
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Jórvík
Wystan Hugh Auden
Wystan Auden
Wystan H Auden
W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
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Water is the soul of the Earth.
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Nobody knows what the cause is, though some pretend they do it like some hidden assassin waiting to strike at you. Childless women get it, and men when they retire it as if there had to be some outlet for their foiled creative fire.
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A poem is a verbal artifact which must be as skillfully and solidly constructed as a table or a motorcycle.
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Few can remember clearly when innocence came to a sudden end, the moment at which we ask for the first time: Am I loved?
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I said earlier that 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.
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Politics cannot be a science, because in politics theory and practice cannot be separated, and the sciences depend upon their separation.
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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.
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Literary confessors are contemptible, like beggars who exhibit their sores for money, but not so contemptible as the public that buys their books.
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Long ago the accusations had begun, And suddenly knew by whom it had been judged
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A man is a form of life that dreams in order to act and acts in order to dream.
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The way to read a fairy tale is to throw yourself in.
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The parlour cars and Pullmans are packed also with scented assassins, salad-eaters who murder on milk.
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A small grove massacred to the last ash, An oak with heart-rot, give away the show: 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.
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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.
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See without looking, hear without listening, breathe without asking.
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All that we are not stares back at what we are.
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Earth, receive an honored guest William Yeats is laid to rest. Let the Irish vessel lie Emptied of its poetry.
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Money cannot buy the fuel of love but is excellent kindling.
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The glacier knocks in the cupboard, The desert sighs in the bed, And the crack in the teacup opens A lane to the land of the dead.
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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.
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