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Desire, even in its wildest tantrums, can neither persuade me it is love nor stop me from wishing it were.

W. H. Auden

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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
Sensual
Neither
Stop
Wish
Desire
Tantrums
Even
Wildest
Love
Persuade
Wishing

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Dance till the stars come down from the rafters Dance, Dance, Dance 'till you drop.
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We would rather be ruined than changed. We would rather die in our dread than climb the cross of the moment and let our illusions die.
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Whatever you do, good or bad, people will always have something negative to say
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Words have no word for words that are not true.
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All I have is a voice to undo the folded lie, the romantic lie in the brain of the sensual man-in-the-street and the lie of Authority whose buildings grope the sky: 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.
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You need not see what someone is doing to know if it is his vocation, you have only to watch his eyes: a cook mixing a sauce, a surgeon making a primary incision, a clerk completing a bill of lading wear the same rapt expression, forgetting themselves in a function. How beautiful it is, that eye-on-the-obje ct look.
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No person can be a great leader unless he takes genuine joy in the successes of those under him.
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Money is the necessity that frees us from necessity.
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Beauty, midnight, vision dies: Let the winds of dawn that blow Softly round your dreaming head Such a day of welcome show Eye and knocking heart may bless, Find our mortal world enough Noons of dryness find you fed By the involuntary powers, Nights of insult let you pass Watched by every human love.
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Long ago the accusations had begun, And suddenly knew by whom it had been judged
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Our claim to our own bodies and our world is our catastrophe.
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We are lived by powers we pretend to understand.
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If time were the wicked sheriff in a horse opera, I'd pay for riding lessons and take his gun away.
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Say this city has ten million souls, Some are living in mansions, some are living in holes: Yet there’s no place for us, my dear, yet there’s no place for us.
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In the end, art is small beer. The really serious things are earning one's living so as not to be a parasite and loving one's neighbor.
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The most exciting rhythms seem unexpected and complex, the most beautiful melodies simple and inevitable.
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Of course, Behaviourism 'works'. So does torture. Give me a no-nonsense, down-to-earth behaviourist, a few drugs, and simple electrical appliances, and in six months I will have him reciting the Athanasian Creed in public.
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By mourning tongues The death of the poet was kept from his poems.
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The words of a dead man are modified in the guts of the living.
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The Ogre does what ogres can, Deeds quite impossible for Man, But one prize is beyond his reach, The Ogre cannot master Speech: About a subjugated plain, Among its desperate and slain, The Ogre stalks with hands on hips, While drivel gushes from his lips.
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