Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
Get up very early and get going at once. In fact, work first and wash afterwards.
W. H. Auden
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
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
Early
Fact
Facts
Firsts
First
Going
Work
Wash
Afterwards
More quotes by W. H. Auden
Murder is commoner among cooks than among members of any other profession.
W. H. Auden
America has always been a country of amateurs where the professional, that is to say, the man who claims authority as a member of an élite which knows the law in some field or other, is an object of distrust and resentment.
W. H. Auden
Oh, how I wish that Orwell were still alive, so that I could read his comments on contemporary events!
W. H. Auden
Private faces in public places Are wiser and nicer Than public faces in private places.
W. H. Auden
The definition of prayer is paying careful and concentrated attention to something other than your own constructions.
W. H. Auden
What the poet says has never been said before, but, once he has said it, his readers recognize its validity for themselves.
W. H. Auden
The center that I cannot find is known to my unconscious mind.
W. H. Auden
What answer to the meaning of existence should one require beyond the right to exercise one's gifts?
W. H. Auden
Courses in prosody, rhetoric and comparative philology would be required of all students, and every student would have to select three courses out of courses in mathematics, natural history, geology, meteorology, archaeology, mythology, liturgics, cooking.
W. H. Auden
A poet is a professional maker of verbal objects.
W. H. Auden
When someone between twenty and forty says, apropos of a work of art, 'I know what I like,' he is really saying 'I have no taste of my own but accept the taste of my cultural milieu.
W. H. Auden
We are lived by powers we pretend to understand.
W. H. Auden
The desires of the heart are as crooked as corkscrews Not to be born is the best for man The second best is a formal order The dance's pattern, dance while you can. Dance, dance, for the figure is easy The tune is catching and will not stop Dance till the stars come down from the rafters Dance, dance, dance till you drop.
W. H. Auden
All sins tend to be addictive, and the terminal point of addiction is damnation.
W. H. Auden
I said earlier that I do not believe an artist's life throws much light upon his works. I do believe, however, that, more often than most people realize, his works may throw light upon his life. An artist with certain imaginative ideas in his head may then involve himself in relationships which are congenial to them.
W. H. Auden
Thou shalt not answer questionnaires Or quizzes upon world affairs, Nor with compliance Take any test. Thou shalt not sit with statisticians nor commit A social science.
W. H. Auden
Few people take an interest in Iceland, but in those few the interest is passionate.
W. H. Auden
It is nonsense to speak of 'higher' and 'lower' pleasures. To a hungry man it is, rightly, more important that he eat than that he philosophize.
W. H. Auden
Into this neutral air Where blind skyscrapers use Their full height to proclaim The strength of Collective Man, Each language pours its vain Competitive excuse.
W. H. Auden
In times of joy, all of us wished we possessed a tail we could wag.
W. H. Auden
