Quote

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

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
Water
Squares
Desire
Tea
Running
Cups
Stills
Smoke
Still
Tongue
Without
Dear
Never
Deep
Square
Fire
Waters

More quotes by W. H. Auden

Image
We were put on this Earth to help others. Why others were put here is beyond me.
W. H. Auden
Image
Money cannot buy the fuel of love but is excellent kindling.
W. H. Auden
Image
Laziness acknowledges the relation of the present to the past but ignores its relation to the future impatience acknowledge its relation to the future but ignores its relation to the past neither the lazy nor the impatient man, that is, accepts the present instant in its full reality and so cannot love his neighbour completely.
W. H. Auden
Image
For time is inches And the heart's changes, Where ghost has haunted Lost and wanted.
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
Soft as the earth is mankind and both need to be altered.
W. H. Auden
Image
A man is a form of life that dreams in order to act and acts in order to dream.
W. H. Auden
Image
Without communication with the dead, a fully human life is not possible.
W. H. Auden
Image
Like everything which is not the involuntary result of fleeting emotion but the creation of time and will, any marriage, happy or unhappy, is infinitely more interesting than any romance, however passionate.
W. H. Auden
Image
There is a certain kind of person who is so dominated by the desire to be loved for himself alone that he has constantly to test those around him by tiresome behavior what he says and does must be admired, not because it is intrinsically admirable, but because it is his remark, his act. Does not this explain a good deal of avant-garde art?
W. H. Auden
Image
The definition of prayer is paying careful and concentrated attention to something other than your own constructions.
W. H. Auden
Image
There are not many English novels which deserve to be called great: Parade's End is one of them.
W. H. Auden
Image
A poet feels the impulse to create a work of art when the passive awe provoked by an event is transformed into a desire to express that awe in a rite of worship.
W. H. Auden
Image
You owe it to all of us all get on with what you're good at.
W. H. Auden
Image
Poetry might be defined as the clear expression of mixed feelings.
W. H. Auden
Image
All works of art are commissioned in the sense that no artist can create one by a simple act of will but must wait until what he believes to be a good idea for a work comes to him.
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
A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us.
W. H. Auden
Image
A craftsman knows in advance what the finished result will be, while the artist knows only what it will be when he has finished it.
W. H. Auden
Image
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.
W. H. Auden