Quote

Men will pay large sums to whores for telling them they are not bores.

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
Telling
Large
Pay
Men
Whores
Sums
Bores

More quotes by W. H. Auden

Image
Fate succumbs many a species: one alone jeopardises itself.
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
Those to whom evil is doneDo evil in return.
W. H. Auden
Image
In a game, just losing is almost as satisfying as just winning... In life the loser's score is always zero.
W. H. Auden
Image
A false enchantment can all too easily last a lifetime.
W. H. Auden
Image
Almost all of our relationships begin and most of them continue as forms of mutual exploitation, a mental or physical barter, to be terminated when one or both parties run out of goods.
W. H. Auden
Image
One of the most horrible, yet most important, discoveries of our age has been that, if you really wish to destroy a person and turn him into an automaton, the surest method is not physical torture, in the strict sense, but simply to keep him awake, i.e., in an existential relation to life without intermission.
W. H. Auden
Image
Poetry might be defined as the clear expression of mixed feelings.
W. H. Auden
Image
No being can make another one happy.
W. H. Auden
Image
Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.
W. H. Auden
Image
Slavery is so intolerable a condition that the slave can hardly escape deluding himself into thinking that he is choosing to obey his master's commands when, in fact, he is obliged to. Most slaves of habit suffer from this delusion and so do some writers, enslaved by an all too personal style.
W. H. Auden
Image
Man desires to be free and he desires to feel important. This places him in a dilemma, for the more he emancipates himself from necessity the less important he feels.
W. H. Auden
Image
My deepest feeling about politicians is that they are dangerous lunatics to be avoided when possible and carefully humored people, above all, to whom one must never tell the truth.
W. H. Auden
Image
O plunge your hands in water, Plunge them in up to the wrist Stare, stare in the basin And wonder what you've missed.
W. H. Auden
Image
Aside from purely technical analysis, nothing can be said about music, except when it is bad when it is good, one can only listen and be grateful.
W. H. Auden
Image
The poet marries the language, and out of this marriage the poem is born.
W. H. Auden
Image
In relation to a writer, most readers believe in the Double Standard: they may be unfaithful to him as often as they like, but he must never, never be unfaithful to them.
W. H. Auden
Image
The way to read a fairy tale is to throw yourself in.
W. H. Auden
Image
As a rule, it was the pleasure-haters who became unjust.
W. H. Auden
Image
The glacier knocks in the cupboard, The desert sighs in the bed, And the crack in the teacup opens A lane to the land of the dead.
W. H. Auden