Quote

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

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
Loved
Weeping
Mourns
Voice
Household
Anarchic
Death
Grave
Aphrodite
Graves
Eros
Impulse
Dearly
Dumb
Builder
Rational
Mourning
Cities
Mourn

More quotes by W. H. Auden

Image
To discover how to be human now is the reason we follow this star.
W. H. Auden
Image
To make one, there must be two.
W. H. Auden
Image
Like love we don't know where or why Like love we cant compel or fly Like Love we often weep Like Love we seldom keep
W. H. Auden
Image
The words of a dead man are modified in the guts of the living.
W. H. Auden
Image
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
Image
Ideally, government is the means by which all the individual wills are assured complete freedom of moral choice and at the same time prevented from ever clashing.
W. H. Auden
Image
A poor American feels guilty at being poor, but less guilty than an American rentier who has inherited wealth but is doing nothingto increase it what can the latter do but take to drink and psychoanalysis?
W. H. Auden
Image
All the rest is silence On the other side of the wall, And the silence ripeness, And the ripeness all.
W. H. Auden
Image
We are all here on earth to help others what on earth the others are here for I don't know.
W. H. Auden
Image
Few can remember clearly when innocence came to a sudden end, the moment at which we ask for the first time: Am I loved?
W. H. Auden
Image
What answer to the meaning of existence should one require beyond the right to exercise one's gifts?
W. H. Auden
Image
Goodness is easier to recognize than to define.
W. H. Auden
Image
The nightingales are sobbing in The orchards of our mothers, And hearts that we broke long ago Have long been breaking others Tears are round, the sea is deep: Roll them overboard and sleep.
W. H. Auden
Image
The stars are not wanted now, put out every one Pack up the moon & dismantle the sun.
W. H. Auden
Image
All I have is a voice to undo the folded lie, the romantic lie in the brain of the sensual man-in-the-street and the lie of Authority whose buildings grope the sky: 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
Image
We must love one another or die
W. H. Auden
Image
Words are for those with promises to keep.
W. H. Auden
Image
The poet who writes free verse is like Robinson Crusoe on his desert island: he must do all his cooking, laundry and darning for himself. In a few exceptional cases, this manly independence produces something original and impressive, but more often the result is squalor - dirty sheets on the unmade bed and empty bottles on the unswept floor.
W. H. Auden
Image
It's usually the stupid people that develop long illnesses. You need more than indolence and selfishness, you need endurance to make a good patient.
W. H. Auden
Image
A poet is a professional maker of verbal objects.
W. H. Auden