Quote

So long as we think of it objectively, time is Fate or Chance, the factor in our lives for which we are not responsible, and about which we can do nothing but when we begin to think of it subjectively, we feel responsible for our time, and the notion of punctuality arises.

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
Think
Begin
Objectively
Thinking
Chance
Arises
Lives
Factor
Nothing
Factors
Feel
Arise
Feels
Notion
Long
Responsible
Subjectively
Time
Fate
Punctuality

More quotes by W. H. Auden

Image
Evil is unspectacular and always human, and shares our bed and eats at our own table.
W. H. Auden
Image
A tremendous number of people in America work very hard at something that bores them. Even a rich man thinks he has to go down to the office everyday. Not because he likes it but because he can't think of anything else to do.
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
Cathedrals, luxury liners laden with souls, Holding to the east their hulls of stone.
W. H. Auden
Image
America has always been a country of amateurs where the professional, that is to say, the man who claims authority as a member of an élite which knows the law in some field or other, is an object of distrust and resentment.
W. H. Auden
Image
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
Image
And none will hear the postman’s knock Without a quickening of the heart. For who can bear to feel himself forgotten?
W. H. Auden
Image
Dance till the stars come down from the rafters Dance, Dance, Dance 'till you drop.
W. H. Auden
Image
In relation to a writer, most readers believe in the Double Standard: they may be unfaithful to him as often as they like, but he must never, never be unfaithful to them.
W. H. Auden
Image
a culture is no better than its woods
W. H. Auden
Image
Behind you swiftly the figure comes softly, The spot on your skin is a shocking disease.
W. H. Auden
Image
Into this neutral air Where blind skyscrapers use Their full height to proclaim The strength of Collective Man, Each language pours its vain Competitive excuse.
W. H. Auden
Image
I and the public know What all schoolchildren learn, Those to whom evil is done Do evil in return.
W. H. Auden
Image
To discover how to be human now is the reason we follow this star.
W. H. Auden
Image
The friends who met here and embraced are gone, Each to his own mistake.
W. H. Auden
Image
You owe it to all of us all get on with what you're good at.
W. H. Auden
Image
Earth, receive an honored guest William Yeats is laid to rest. Let the Irish vessel lie Emptied of its poetry.
W. H. Auden
Image
When someone between twenty and forty says, apropos of a work of art, 'I know what I like,' he is really saying 'I have no taste of my own but accept the taste of my cultural milieu.
W. H. Auden
Image
Beauty, midnight, vision dies: Let the winds of dawn that blow Softly round your dreaming head Such a day of welcome show Eye and knocking heart may bless, Find our mortal world enough Noons of dryness find you fed By the involuntary powers, Nights of insult let you pass Watched by every human love.
W. H. Auden
Image
Caesar's double-bed is warm As an unimportant clerk Writes i do not like my work On a pink official form.
W. H. Auden