Quote

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

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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
Fire
Retiring
Causes
Strike
Foiled
Creative
Pretend
Childless
Waiting
Hidden
Assassin
Though
Strikes
Assassins
Women
Cancer
Outlet
Men
Cause
Retire
Like
Nobody
Outlets

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Like love we don't know where or why Like love we cant compel or fly Like Love we often weep Like Love we seldom keep
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It is already possible to imagine a society in which the majority of the population, that is to say, its laborers, will have almost as much leisure as in earlier times was enjoyed by the aristocracy. When one recalls how aristocracies in the past actually behaved, the prospect is not cheerful.
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You shall love your crooked neighbour, with your crooked heart.
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If time were the wicked sheriff in a horse opera, I'd pay for riding lessons and take his gun away.
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Time and fevers burn away Individual beauty from Thoughtful children, and the grave Proves the child ephemeral
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Choice of attention - to pay attention to this and ignore that - is to the inner life what choice of action is to the outer. In both cases, a man is responsible for his choice and must accept the consequences, whatever they may be.
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The poet marries the language, and out of this marriage the poem is born.
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Nobody is ever sent to Hell: he or she insists on going there.
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The class distinctions proper to a democratic society are not those of rank or money, still less, as is apt to happen when these are abandoned, of race, but of age.
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Recipe for the upbringing of a poet: 'As much neurosis as the child can bear.
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To the man-in-the-street, who, I'm sorry to say, is a keen observer of life. The word Intellectual suggests straight away. A man who's untrue to his wife.
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Great art is clear thinking about mixed feelings.
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Happy the hare at morning, for she cannot read The hunter's waking thoughts.
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Death is the sound of distant thunder at a picnic.
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I and the public know What all schoolchildren learn, Those to whom evil is done Do evil in return.
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Out on the lawn I lie in bed, Vega conspicuous overhead.
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The chances are that, in the course of his lifetime, the major poet will write more bad poems than the minor, simply because major poets write a lot.
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Aphorisms are essentially an aristocratic genre of writing. The aphorist does not argue or explain, he asserts and implicit in his assertion is a conviction that he is wiser and more intelligent than his readers.
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The friends who met here and embraced are gone, Each to his own mistake.
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As a rule, it was the pleasure-haters who became unjust.
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