Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
To be happy means to be free, not from pain or fear, but from care or anxiety.
W. H. Auden
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
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
Happy
Free
Pain
Fear
Means
Care
Mean
Anxiety
More quotes by W. H. Auden
Money is the necessity that frees us from necessity.
W. H. Auden
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone. Silence the pianos and with muffled drum Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
W. H. Auden
I sit in one of the dives On Fifty-second Street Uncertain and afraid As the clever hopes expire Of a low dishonest decade
W. H. Auden
A man is a form of life that dreams in order to act and acts in order to dream.
W. H. Auden
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.
W. H. Auden
There's only one good test of pornography. Get twelve normal men to read the book, and then ask them, ''Did you get an erection?'' If the answer is ''Yes'' from a majority of the twelve, then the book is pornographic.
W. H. Auden
The way to read a fairy tale is to throw yourself in.
W. H. Auden
Let all your thinks be thanks.
W. H. Auden
The desires of the heart are as crooked as corkscrews Not to be born is the best for man The second best is a formal order The dance's pattern, dance while you can. Dance, dance, for the figure is easy The tune is catching and will not stop Dance till the stars come down from the rafters Dance, dance, dance till you drop.
W. H. Auden
It is, for example, axiomatic that we should all think of ourselves as being more sensitive than other people because, when we are insensitive in our dealings with others, we cannot be aware of it at the time: conscious insensitivity is a self-contradiction.
W. H. Auden
Nobody is ever sent to Hell: he or she insists on going there.
W. H. Auden
Detective stories have nothing to do with works of art.
W. H. Auden
Now is the age of anxiety.
W. H. Auden
The most exciting rhythms seem unexpected and complex, the most beautiful melodies simple and inevitable.
W. H. Auden
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
All the rest is silence On the other side of the wall, And the silence ripeness, And the ripeness all.
W. H. Auden
With the farming of a verse Make a vineyard of the curse
W. H. Auden
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.
W. H. Auden
Get up very early and get going at once. In fact, work first and wash afterwards.
W. H. Auden
Organic growth is a cyclical process it is just as true to say that the oak is a potential acorn as it is to say the acorn is a potential oak. But the process of writing a poem, of making any art object, is not cyclical but a motion in one direction toward a definite end.
W. H. Auden
