Quote

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...

W. H. Auden

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

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
First
Conscience
Obscurity
Many
Poetry
Profoundly
People
Modern
Examine
Asks
Genuinely
History
Complain
Experience
Shared
Another
Occasions
Firsts
Complaining
Consciences

More quotes by W. H. Auden

Image
Good can imagine Evil but Evil cannot imagine Good.
W. H. Auden
Image
To choose what is difficult all one's days, as if it were easy, that is faith
W. H. Auden
Image
Sincerity is technique.
W. H. Auden
Image
Thank God for books as an alternative to conversation.
W. H. Auden
Image
To pray is to pay attention to something or someone other than oneself.
W. H. Auden
Image
Beloved, we are always in the wrong, Handling so clumsily our stupid lives, Suffering too little or too long, Too careful even in our selfish loves: The decorative manias we obey Die in grimaces round us every day, Yet through their tohu-bohu comes a voice Which utters an absurd command - Rejoice.
W. H. Auden
Image
Every man carries with him through life a mirror, as unique and impossible to get rid of as his shadow.
W. H. Auden
Image
The poet marries the language, and out of this marriage the poem is born.
W. H. Auden
Image
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.
W. H. Auden
Image
Human language is mythological and metaphorical by nature.
W. H. Auden
Image
To my generation no other English poet seemed so perfectly to express the sensibility of a male adolescent. If I do not now turn to him very often, I am eternally grateful to him for the joy he gave me in my youth.
W. H. Auden
Image
The stars are not wanted now, put out every one Pack up the moon & dismantle the sun.
W. H. Auden
Image
I will love you forever swears the poet. I find this easy to swear too. I will love you at 4:15 pm next Tuesday - Is that still as easy?
W. H. Auden
Image
But if a stranger in the train asks me my occupation, I never answer writer for fear that he may go on to ask me what I write, and to answer poetry would embarrass us both, for we both know that nobody can earn a living simply by writing poetry.
W. H. Auden
Image
There is no love There are only the various envies, all of them sad.
W. H. Auden
Image
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
Image
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.
W. H. Auden
Image
Proper names are poetry in the raw. Like all poetry they are untranslatable.
W. H. Auden
Image
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.
W. H. Auden
Image
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.
W. H. Auden