Quote

Base words are uttered only by the base And can for such at once be understood But noble platitudes - ah, there's a case Where the most careful scrutiny is needed To tell a voice that's genuinely good From one that's base but merely has succeeded.

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
Understood
Scrutiny
Cases
Succeeded
Needed
Genuinely
Voice
Base
Words
Noble
Tell
Careful
Good
Merely
Platitudes
Case
Uttered

More quotes by 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
The eye likes novelty, but the ear craves familiarity.
W. H. Auden
Image
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.
W. H. Auden
Image
The element of craftsmanship in poetry is obscured by the fact that all men are taught to speak and most to read and write, while very few men are taught to draw or paint or write music.
W. H. Auden
Image
Left to itself the masculine imagination has very little appreciation for the here and now it prefers to dwell on what is absent, on what has been or may be. If men are more punctual than women, it is because they know that, without the external discipline of clock time, they would never get anything done.
W. H. Auden
Image
All that we are not stares back at what we are.
W. H. Auden
Image
The habit-forming pain, Mismanagement and grief: We must suffer them all again.
W. H. Auden
Image
Shall memory restore The steps and the shore, The face and the meeting place.
W. H. Auden
Image
As a poet, there is only one political duty, and that is to defend one's language from corruption.
W. H. Auden
Image
Hunger allows no choice.
W. H. Auden
Image
Time and fevers burn away Individual beauty from Thoughtful children, and the grave Proves the child ephemeral
W. H. Auden
Image
To read is to translate, for no two persons' experiences are the same. A bad reader is like a bad translator: he interprets literally when he ought to paraphrase and paraphrases when he ought to interpret literally.
W. H. Auden
Image
To pray is to pay attention to something or someone other than oneself.
W. H. Auden
Image
Few can remember clearly when innocence came to a sudden end, the moment at which we ask for the first time: Am I loved?
W. H. Auden
Image
I'll love you till the ocean Is folded and hung up to dry And the seven stars go squawking Like geese about the sky.
W. H. Auden
Image
Without communication with the dead, a fully human life is not possible.
W. H. Auden
Image
Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.
W. H. Auden
Image
The condition of mankind is, and always has been, so miserable and depraved that, if anyone were to say to the poet: For God's sake stop singing and do something useful like putting on the kettle or fetching bandages, what just reason could he give for refusing?
W. H. Auden
Image
All sins tend to be addictive, and the terminal point of addiction is damnation.
W. H. Auden
Image
Our sufferings and weaknesses, in so far as they are personal, are of no literary interest whatsoever. They are only interesting in so far as we can see them as typical of the human condition.
W. H. Auden