Quote

One can only blaspheme if one believes.

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
Believe
Blaspheme
Believes

More quotes by W. H. Auden

Image
I'm always amazed at the American practice of allowing one party to a homosexual act to remain passive--it's so undemocratic. Sexmust be mutual.
W. H. Auden
Image
There are good books which are only for adults. There are no good books which are only for children.
W. H. Auden
Image
Behind you swiftly the figure comes softly, The spot on your skin is a shocking disease.
W. H. Auden
Image
Thank God for books as an alternative to conversation.
W. H. Auden
Image
We were put on this earth to make things.
W. H. Auden
Image
One of the most horrible, yet most important, discoveries of our age has been that, if you really wish to destroy a person and turn him into an automaton, the surest method is not physical torture, in the strict sense, but simply to keep him awake, i.e., in an existential relation to life without intermission.
W. H. Auden
Image
Man desires to be free and he desires to feel important. This places him in a dilemma, for the more he emancipates himself from necessity the less important he feels.
W. H. Auden
Image
All I have is a voice.
W. H. Auden
Image
Let all your thinks be thanks.
W. H. Auden
Image
I used to try and concentrate the poem so much that there wasn't a word that wasn't essential. This leads to becoming boring and constipated.
W. H. Auden
Image
What living occasion can, Be just to the absent?
W. H. Auden
Image
The trees encountered on a country stroll Reveal a lot about that country's soul ... A culture is no better than its woods.
W. H. Auden
Image
Christmas and Easter can be subjects for poetry, but Good Friday, like Auschwitz, cannot. The reality is so horrible it is not surprising that people should have found it a stumbling block to faith.
W. H. Auden
Image
One of the troubles of our times is that we are all, I think, precocious as personalities and backward as characters.
W. H. Auden
Image
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
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
Precisely because we do not communicate by singing, a song can be out of place but not out of character it is just as credible that a stupid person should sing beautifully as that a clever person should do so.
W. H. Auden
Image
To pray is to pay attention to something or someone other than oneself.
W. H. Auden
Image
Recipe for the upbringing of a poet: 'As much neurosis as the child can bear.
W. H. Auden
Image
Though one cannot always Remember exactly why one has been happy, There is no forgetting that one was.
W. H. Auden