Quote

I and the public know What all schoolchildren learn, Those to whom evil is done Do evil in return.

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
Return
Learning
Public
Politics
Evil
Learn
Done
Schoolchildren
Israel

More quotes by W. H. Auden

Image
Composing mortals with immortal fire.
W. H. Auden
Image
Human beings are, necessarily, actors who...can be divided...into the sane who know they are acting and the mad who do not.
W. H. Auden
Image
Good can imagine Evil but Evil cannot imagine Good.
W. H. Auden
Image
History marched to the drums of a clear idea...
W. H. Auden
Image
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.
W. H. Auden
Image
All pity is self-pity.
W. H. Auden
Image
Intellectual disgrace Stares from every human face, And the seas of pity lie Locked and frozen in each eye.
W. H. Auden
Image
The lights must never go out, The music must always play
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
A dead man who never caused others to die seldom rates a statue.
W. H. Auden
Image
As a rule, it was the pleasure-haters who became unjust.
W. H. Auden
Image
The commonest ivory tower is that of the average man, the state of passivity towards experience.
W. H. Auden
Image
Of course,Behaviourism 'works'. So does torture.
W. H. Auden
Image
Herds of reindeer move across Miles and miles of golden moss
W. H. Auden
Image
An honest self-portrait is extremely rare because a man who has reached the degree of self-consciousness presupposed by the desire to paint his own portrait has almost always also developed an ego-consciousness which paints himself painting himself, and introduces artificial highlights and dramatic shadows.
W. H. Auden
Image
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
Image
Alone, alone, about the dreadful wood / Of conscious evil runs a lost mankind, / Dreading to find its Father.
W. H. Auden
Image
Adjectives are the potbelly of poetry.
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
Whatever you do, good or bad, people will always have something negative to say
W. H. Auden