Quote

A dead man who never caused others to die seldom rates a statue.

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
Men
Rates
Caused
Seldom
Rate
Dead
Dies
Others
Statue
Never
Statues

More quotes by W. H. Auden

Image
To pray is to pay attention to something or someone other than oneself.
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
It is already possible to imagine a society in which the majority of the population, that is to say, its laborers, will have almost as much leisure as in earlier times was enjoyed by the aristocracy. When one recalls how aristocracies in the past actually behaved, the prospect is not cheerful.
W. H. Auden
Image
Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can: all of them make me laugh.
W. H. Auden
Image
Literary confessors are contemptible, like beggars who exhibit their sores for money, but not so contemptible as the public that buys their books.
W. H. Auden
Image
You know there are no secrets in America. It's quite different in England, where people think of a secret as a shared relation between two people.
W. H. Auden
Image
There's always another story. There's more than meets the eye.
W. H. Auden
Image
Moreover, if great men are the only hope of the Evolutionary Process, they are morally bound to rule over the masses for their own good -- we are all here on earth to help others: what on earth the others are here for, I don't know -- and the masses have no right whatsoever to resist them.
W. H. Auden
Image
Money is the necessity that frees us from necessity. Of all novelists in any country, Trollope best understands the role of money. Compared with him even Balzac is a romantic.
W. H. Auden
Image
Good can imagine Evil but Evil cannot imagine Good.
W. H. Auden
Image
a culture is no better than its woods
W. H. Auden
Image
A poem is a verbal artifact which must be as skillfully and solidly constructed as a table or a motorcycle.
W. H. Auden
Image
Evil is unspectacular and always human, and shares our bed and eats at our own table.
W. H. Auden
Image
Behind the corpse in the reservoir, behind the ghost on the links, Behind the lady who dances and the man who madly drinks, Under the look of fatigue, the attack of migraine and the sigh There is always another story, there is more than meets the eye.
W. H. Auden
Image
Without Art, we should have no notion of the sacred without Science, we should always worship false gods.
W. H. Auden
Image
The closest modern equivalent to the Homeric hero is the ace fighter pilot.
W. H. Auden
Image
It takes little talent to see what lies under one's nose, a good deal to know in what direction to point that organ.
W. H. Auden
Image
To me Art's subject is the human clay, / And landscape but a background to a torso / All Cezanne's apples I would give away / For one small Goya or a Daumier.
W. H. Auden
Image
Narcissus does not fall in love with his reflection because it is beautiful, but because it is his. If it were his beauty that enthralled him, he would be set free in a few years by its fading.
W. H. Auden
Image
The basic stimulus to the intelligence is doubt, a feeling that the meaning of an experience is not self-evident.
W. H. Auden