Quote

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

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
Living
Parasite
Art
Parasites
Ends
Earning
Really
Beer
Things
Neighbor
Life
Loving
Serious
Small

More quotes by W. H. Auden

Image
All the rest is silence On the other side of the wall, And the silence ripeness, And the ripeness all.
W. H. Auden
Image
Herds of reindeer move across Miles and miles of golden moss
W. H. Auden
Image
I will love you forever swears the poet. I find this easy to swear too. I will love you at 4:15 pm next Tuesday - Is that still as easy?
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
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
Image
Man is a history-making creature, who can neither repeat his past, nor leave it behind.
W. H. Auden
Image
The only way to spend New Year's Eve is either quietly with friends or in a brothel. Otherwise when the evening ends and people pair off, someone is bound to be left in tears.
W. H. Auden
Image
Time will say nothing but I told you so.
W. H. Auden
Image
The words of a dead man are modified in the guts of the living.
W. H. Auden
Image
My face looks like a wedding-cake left out in the rain.
W. H. Auden
Image
The Americans are violently oral. That's why in America the mother is all-important and the father has no position at all -- isn't respected in the least. Even the American passion for laxatives can be explained as an oral manifestation. They want to get rid of any unpleasantness taken in through the mouth.
W. H. Auden
Image
Lay your sleeping head, my love, Human on my faithless arm.
W. H. Auden
Image
Marriage is rarely bliss But, surely it would be worse As particles to pelt At thousands of miles per sec About a universe In which a lover's kiss Would either not be felt Or break the loved one's neck.
W. H. Auden
Image
The surest sign that a man has a genuine taste of his own is that he is uncertain of it.
W. H. Auden
Image
Every American poet feels that the whole responsibility for contemporary poetry has fallen upon his shoulders, that he is a literary aristocracy of one.
W. H. Auden
Image
Love each other or perish.
W. H. Auden
Image
The trees encountered on a country stroll Reveal a lot about that country's soul ... A culture is no better than its woods.
W. H. Auden
Image
Happy the hare at morning, for she cannot read The hunter's waking thoughts.
W. H. Auden
Image
The primary function of poetry, as of all the arts, is to make us more aware of ourselves and the world around us. I do not know if such increased awareness makes us more moral or more efficient. I hope not. I think it makes us more human, and I am quite certain it makes us more difficult to deceive.
W. H. Auden
Image
To have a sense of sin means to feel guilty at there being an ethical choice to make, a guilt which, however good I may become, remains unchanged.
W. H. Auden