Quote

Goodness is easier to recognize than to define.

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
Define
Recognize
Goodness
Easier
Relationship

More quotes by W. H. Auden

Image
The friends who met here and embraced are gone, Each to his own mistake.
W. H. Auden
Image
Though one cannot always Remember exactly why one has been happy, There is no forgetting that one was.
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
It's frightening how easy it is to commit murder in America. Just a drink too much. I can see myself doing it. In England, one feels all the social restraints holding one back. But here, anything can happen.
W. H. Auden
Image
For time is inches And the heart's changes, Where ghost has haunted Lost and wanted.
W. H. Auden
Image
Behind you swiftly the figure comes softly, The spot on your skin is a shocking disease.
W. H. Auden
Image
All wishes, whatever their apparent content, have the same and unvarying meaning: I refuse to be what I am.
W. H. Auden
Image
The stars are dead. The animals will not look: We are left alone with our day, and the time is short, and History to the defeated May say Alas but cannot help nor pardon.
W. H. Auden
Image
One of the troubles of our times is that we are all, I think, precocious as personalities and backward as characters.
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
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
Thank God for books as an alternative to conversation.
W. H. Auden
Image
Nobody knows what the cause is, though some pretend they do it like some hidden assassin waiting to strike at you. Childless women get it, and men when they retire it as if there had to be some outlet for their foiled creative fire.
W. H. Auden
Image
It's usually the stupid people that develop long illnesses. You need more than indolence and selfishness, you need endurance to make a good patient.
W. H. Auden
Image
Had Greek civilization never existed ... we would never have become fully conscious.
W. H. Auden
Image
The most important truths are likely to be those which society at that time least wants to hear.
W. H. Auden
Image
The image of myself which I try to create in my own mind in order that I may love myself is very different from the image which I try to create in the minds of others in order that they may love me.
W. H. Auden
Image
Great art is clear thinking about mixed feelings.
W. H. Auden
Image
Blessed be all metrical rules that forbid automatic responses, force us to have second thoughts, free us from the fetters of Self.
W. H. Auden
Image
The poet marries the language, and out of this marriage the poem is born.
W. H. Auden