Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
O plunge your hands in water, Plunge them in up to the wrist Stare, stare in the basin And wonder what you've missed.
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
Water
Wrist
Hands
Wrists
Plunge
Stare
Missed
Staring
Regret
Wonder
Basin
More quotes by W. H. Auden
Every autobiography is concerned with two characters, a Don Quixote, the Ego, and a Sancho Panza, the Self.
W. H. Auden
The Americans are violently oral. That's why in America the mother is all-important and the father has no position at all -- isn't respected in the least. Even the American passion for laxatives can be explained as an oral manifestation. They want to get rid of any unpleasantness taken in through the mouth.
W. H. Auden
No hero is mortal till he dies.
W. H. Auden
Happy the hare at morning, for she cannot read The hunter's waking thoughts.
W. H. Auden
One cannot review a bad book without showing off.
W. H. Auden
'Healing,' Papa would tell me, 'is not a science, but the intuitive art of wooing nature.'
W. H. Auden
When I am in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a drawing room full of dukes.
W. H. Auden
There is a certain kind of person who is so dominated by the desire to be loved for himself alone that he has constantly to test those around him by tiresome behavior what he says and does must be admired, not because it is intrinsically admirable, but because it is his remark, his act. Does not this explain a good deal of avant-garde art?
W. H. Auden
All sins tend to be addictive, and the terminal point of addiction is damnation.
W. H. Auden
One can only blaspheme if one believes.
W. H. Auden
We are lived by powers we pretend to understand.
W. H. Auden
But once in a while the odd thing happens Once in a while the dream comes true And the whole pattern of life is altered Once in a while, the moon turns blue
W. H. Auden
The windiest militant trash Important Persons shout Is not so crude as our wish: What mad Nijinsky wrote About Diaghilev Is true of the normal heart For the error bred in the bone Of each woman and each man Craves what it cannot have Not universal love But to be loved alone.
W. H. Auden
It is a sad fact about our culture that a poet can earn much more money writing or talking about his art than he can by practicing it.
W. H. Auden
Words have no word for words that are not true.
W. H. Auden
If time were the wicked sheriff in a horse opera, I'd pay for riding lessons and take his gun away.
W. H. Auden
To make one, there must be two.
W. H. Auden
Our sufferings and weaknesses, in so far as they are personal, are of no literary interest whatsoever. They are only interesting in so far as we can see them as typical of the human condition.
W. H. Auden
And make us as Newton was, who in his garden watching The apple falling towards England, became aware Between himself and her of an eternal tie.
W. H. Auden
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
