Quote

Detective stories have nothing to do with works of art.

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
Art
Stories
Nothing
Detective
Detectives
Works

More quotes by W. H. Auden

Image
A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.
W. H. Auden
Image
Shall memory restore The steps and the shore, The face and the meeting place.
W. H. Auden
Image
Most people enjoy the sight of their own handwriting as they enjoy the smell of their own farts.
W. H. Auden
Image
The camera may do justice to laughter, but must degrade sorrow.
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
You need not see what someone is doing to know if it is his vocation, you have only to watch his eyes: a cook mixing a sauce, a surgeon making a primary incision, a clerk completing a bill of lading wear the same rapt expression, forgetting themselves in a function. How beautiful it is, that eye-on-the-obje ct look.
W. H. Auden
Image
I just try to put the thing out and hope somebody will read it. Someone says: 'Whom do you write for?' I reply: 'Do you read me?' If they say 'Yes,' I say, 'Do you like it?' If they say 'No,' then I say, 'I don't write for you.'
W. H. Auden
Image
The only reason the Protestants and Catholics have given up the idea of universal domination is because they've realised they can't get away with it.
W. H. Auden
Image
See without looking, hear without listening, breathe without asking.
W. H. Auden
Image
We were put on this Earth to help others. Why others were put here is beyond me.
W. H. Auden
Image
Routine, in an intelligent man, is a sign of ambition.
W. H. Auden
Image
Goodness is easier to recognize than to define.
W. H. Auden
Image
The stars are not wanted now, put out every one Pack up the moon & dismantle the sun.
W. H. Auden
Image
Human language is mythological and metaphorical by nature.
W. H. Auden
Image
We who must die demand a miracle. How could the Eternal do a temporal act, The Infinite become a finite fact? Nothing can save us that is possible: We who must die demand a miracle.
W. H. Auden
Image
What the mass media offers is not popular art, but entertainment which is intended to be consumed like food, forgotten, and replaced by a new dish.
W. H. Auden
Image
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.
W. H. Auden
Image
Dance, dance, dance till you drop.
W. H. Auden
Image
The habit-forming pain, Mismanagement and grief: We must suffer them all again.
W. H. Auden
Image
Far from his illness The wolves ran on through the evergreen forests, The peasant river was untempted by the fashionable quays By mourning tongues The death of the poet was kept from his poems.
W. H. Auden