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To me Art's subject is the human clay, / And landscape but a background to a torso / All Cezanne's apples I would give away / For one small Goya or a Daumier.
W. H. Auden
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W. H. Auden
Age: 66 †
Born: 1907
Born: February 21
Died: 1973
Died: September 28
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Wystan Hugh Auden
Wystan Auden
Wystan H Auden
W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
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More quotes by W. H. Auden
Dance till the stars come down from the rafters Dance, Dance, Dance 'till you drop.
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Oh, how I wish that Orwell were still alive, so that I could read his comments on contemporary events!
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Weep for the lives your wishes never led.
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All that we are not stares back at what we are.
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How should we like it were stars to burn With a passion for us we could not return? If equal affection cannot be, Let the more loving one be me.
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One cannot walk through an assembly factory and not feel that one is in Hell.
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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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A god who is both self-sufficient and content to remain so could not interest us enough to raise the question of his existence.
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Of all possible subjects, travel is the most difficult for an artist, as it is the easiest for a journalist.
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Poetry makes nothing happen.
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Of course, Behaviourism 'works'. So does torture. Give me a no-nonsense, down-to-earth behaviourist, a few drugs, and simple electrical appliances, and in six months I will have him reciting the Athanasian Creed in public.
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A false enchantment can all too easily last a lifetime.
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Adjectives are the potbelly of poetry.
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Be subtle, various, ornamental, clever, And do not listen to those critics ever Whose crude provincial gullets crave in books Plain cooking made still plainer by plain cooks.
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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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Civilizations should be measured by the degree of diversity attained and the degree of unity retained.
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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.
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All I have is a voice to undo the folded lie, the romantic lie in the brain of the sensual man-in-the-street and the lie of Authority whose buildings grope the sky: There is no such thing as the State and no one exists alone Hunger allows no choice to the citizen or the police We must love one another or die.
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We would rather be ruined than changed. We would rather die in our dread than climb the cross of the moment and let our illusions die.
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Our sufferings and weaknesses, in so far as they are personal, are of no literary interest whatsoever. They are only interesting in so far as we can see them as typical of the human condition.
W. H. Auden
