Quote

A poet feels the impulse to create a work of art when the passive awe provoked by an event is transformed into a desire to express that awe in a rite of worship.

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
Impulse
Feels
Express
Work
Worship
Provoked
Poet
Rite
Creativity
Awe
Events
Passive
Create
Transformed
Desire
Event

More quotes by W. H. Auden

Image
There are three cardinal rules - don't take somebody else's boyfriend unless you've been specifically invited to do so, don't take a drink without being asked, and keep a scrupulous accounting in financial matters.
W. H. Auden
Image
One rational voice is dumb: over a grave The household of Impulse mourns one dearly loved. Sad is Eros, builder of cities, And weeping anarchic Aphrodite.
W. H. Auden
Image
Every poet has his dream reader: mine keeps a look out for curious prosodic fauna like bacchics and choriambs.
W. H. Auden
Image
Fame often makes a writer vain, but seldom makes him proud.
W. H. Auden
Image
I smell blood and an era of prominent madmen.
W. H. Auden
Image
I don't think the mystical experience can be verbalized. When the ego disappears, so does power over language.
W. H. Auden
Image
Now the leaves are falling fast, Nurse's flowers will not last Nurses to their graves are gone, And the prams go rolling on.
W. H. Auden
Image
All good art is in the nature of a letter written to amuse a sick friend. Too much art, particularly in our time, is only a letter written to oneself.
W. H. Auden
Image
The way to read a fairy tale is to throw yourself in.
W. H. Auden
Image
Dance till the stars come down from the rafters Dance, Dance, Dance 'till you drop.
W. H. Auden
Image
We do not change as we grow up. The difference between the child and the adult is that the former doesn't know who he is and the latter does.
W. H. Auden
Image
Sincerity is technique.
W. H. Auden
Image
The image of myself which I try to create in my own mind in order that I may love myself is very different from the image which I try to create in the minds of others in order that they may love me.
W. H. Auden
Image
Doom is dark and deeper than any sea-dingle.
W. H. Auden
Image
Music can be made anywhere, is invisible and does not smell.
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
My face looks like a wedding-cake left out in the rain.
W. H. Auden
Image
You must go to bed with friends or whores, where money makes up the difference in beauty or desire.
W. H. Auden
Image
The basic stimulus to the intelligence is doubt, a feeling that the meaning of an experience is not self-evident.
W. H. Auden
Image
There is no love There are only the various envies, all of them sad.
W. H. Auden