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The condition of mankind is, and always has been, so miserable and depraved that, if anyone were to say to the poet: For God's sake stop singing and do something useful like putting on the kettle or fetching bandages, what just reason could he give for refusing?

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
Always
Mankind
Refusing
Like
Conditions
Useful
Stop
Miserable
Anyone
Condition
Fetching
Give
Putting
Kettle
Reason
Sake
Bandages
Giving
Singing
Kettles
Something
Poet
Depraved

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Clear, unscaleable ahead, Rise the mountains of instead From whose cold, cascading streams None may drink except in dreams
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Thank God for books as an alternative to conversation.
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Intellectual disgrace Stares from every human face, And the seas of pity lie Locked and frozen in each eye.
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To hunt for symbols in a fairy tale is absolutely fatal.
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Left to itself the masculine imagination has very little appreciation for the here and now it prefers to dwell on what is absent, on what has been or may be. If men are more punctual than women, it is because they know that, without the external discipline of clock time, they would never get anything done.
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All pity is self-pity.
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Criticism should be a casual conversation.
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Every high C accurately struck demolishes the theory that we are the irresponsible puppets of fate or chance.
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The commonest ivory tower is that of the average man, the state of passivity towards experience.
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Whatever you do, good or bad, people will always have something negative to say
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Anyone who has a child today should train him to be either a physicist or a ballet dancer. Then he'll escape.
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A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us.
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Before people complain of the obscurity of modern poetry, they should first examine their consciences and ask themselves with how many people and on how many occasions they have genuinely and profoundly shared some experience with another...
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A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.
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Encased in talent like a uniform, The rank of every poet is well known They can amaze us like a thunderstorm, Or die so young, or live for years alone.
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Acts of injustice done Between the setting and the rising sun In history lie like bones, each one.
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Poetry might be defined as the clear expression of mixed feelings.
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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.
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Attacking bad books is not only a waste of time but also bad for the character. If I find a book really bad, the only interest I can derive from writing about it has to come from myself, from such display of intelligence, wit and malice as I can contrive. One cannot review a bad book without showing off.
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Say this city has ten million souls, Some are living in mansions, some are living in holes: Yet there’s no place for us, my dear, yet there’s no place for us.
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