Quote

A god who is both self-sufficient and content to remain so could not interest us enough to raise the question of his existence.

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
Existence
Interest
Self
Raise
Enough
Sufficient
Content
Raises
Remain
Question

More quotes by W. H. Auden

Image
To choose what is difficult all one's days, as if it were easy, that is faith
W. H. Auden
Image
I just try to put the thing out and hope somebody will read it. Someone says: 'Whom do you write for?' I reply: 'Do you read me?' If they say 'Yes,' I say, 'Do you like it?' If they say 'No,' then I say, 'I don't write for you.'
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
Desire, even in its wildest tantrums, can neither persuade me it is love nor stop me from wishing it were.
W. H. Auden
Image
Water is the soul of the Earth.
W. H. Auden
Image
I'll love you till the ocean Is folded and hung up to dry And the seven stars go squawking Like geese about the sky.
W. H. Auden
Image
All poets adore explosions, thunderstorms, tornadoes, conflagrations, ruins, scenes of spectacular carnage. The poetic imagination is not at all a desirable quality in a statesman.
W. H. Auden
Image
Adjectives are the potbelly of poetry.
W. H. Auden
Image
Moreover, if great men are the only hope of the Evolutionary Process, they are morally bound to rule over the masses for their own good -- we are all here on earth to help others: what on earth the others are here for, I don't know -- and the masses have no right whatsoever to resist them.
W. H. Auden
Image
A poet's hope: to be, like some valley cheese, local, but prized elsewhere.
W. H. Auden
Image
The primary function of poetry, as of all the arts, is to make us more aware of ourselves and the world around us. I do not know if such increased awareness makes us more moral or more efficient. I hope not. I think it makes us more human, and I am quite certain it makes us more difficult to deceive.
W. H. Auden
Image
No good opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible.
W. H. Auden
Image
When one looks into the window of a store which sells devotional art objects, one can't help wishing the iconoclasts had won.
W. H. Auden
Image
A poet feels the impulse to create a work of art when the passive awe provoked by an event is transformed into a desire to express that awe in a rite of worship.
W. H. Auden
Image
Clear, unscaleable ahead, Rise the mountains of instead From whose cold, cascading streams None may drink except in dreams
W. H. Auden
Image
We who must die demand a miracle. How could the Eternal do a temporal act, The Infinite become a finite fact? Nothing can save us that is possible: We who must die demand a miracle.
W. H. Auden
Image
God may reduce you on Judgment Day to tears of shame, reciting by heart the poems you would have written, had your life been good.
W. H. Auden
Image
Man is a history-making creature, who can neither repeat his past, nor leave it behind.
W. H. Auden
Image
We all have these places where shy humiliations gambol on sunny afternoons.
W. H. Auden
Image
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.
W. H. Auden