Quote

There is no such thing as the State And no one exists alone Hunger allows no choice To the citizen or the police We must love one another or die.

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
Thing
Citizens
Love
Alone
Choices
Citizen
Dies
Allows
State
Hunger
Another
Exists
States
Police
Must
Choice

More quotes by W. H. Auden

Image
We were put on this earth to make things.
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
An unmanly sort of man whose love life seems to have been largely confined to crying in laps and playing mouse.
W. H. Auden
Image
Hemingway is terribly limited. His technique is good for short stories, for people who meet once in a bar very late at night, but do not enter into relations. But not for the novel.
W. H. Auden
Image
A man has his distinctive personal scent which his wife, his children and his dog can recognize. A crowd has a generalized stink. The public is odorless.
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
Christmas and Easter can be subjects for poetry, but Good Friday, like Auschwitz, cannot. The reality is so horrible it is not surprising that people should have found it a stumbling block to faith.
W. H. Auden
Image
Machines are beneficial to the degree that they eliminate the need for labor, harmful to the degree that they eliminate the need for skill.
W. H. Auden
Image
Evil is unspectacular and always human, and shares our bed and eats at our own table.
W. H. Auden
Image
Follow, poet, follow right To the bottom of the night, With your unconstraining voice Still persuade us to rejoice With the farming of a verse Make a vineyard of the curse, Sing of human unsuccess In a rapture of distress In the deserts of the heart Let the healing fountain start, In the prison of his days Teach the free man how to praise.
W. H. Auden
Image
The true men of action in our time, those who transform the world, are not the politicians and statesmen, but the scientists
W. H. Auden
Image
For time is inches And the heart's changes, Where ghost has haunted Lost and wanted.
W. H. Auden
Image
It's a pity I am so impatient and careless, as any ordinary person could learn all the techniques of photography in a week. It is the democratic art, i.e. technical skill is practically eliminated - the more foolproof cameras become with focusing and exposure gadgets the better - and artistic quality depends only on choice of subject.
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
Fame often makes a writer vain, but seldom makes him proud.
W. H. Auden
Image
Over the tea-cups and in the square the tongue has its desire Still waters run deep, my dear, there's never smoke without fire.
W. H. Auden
Image
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
Image
In the deserts of the heart Let the healing fountain start.
W. H. Auden
Image
A vice in common can be the ground of a friendship but not a virtue in common. X and Y may be friends because they are both drunkards or womanizers but, if they are both sober and chaste, they are friends for some other reason.
W. H. Auden
Image
To the man-in-the-street, who, I'm sorry to say, is a keen observer of life. The word Intellectual suggests straight away. A man who's untrue to his wife.
W. H. Auden