Quote

All good art is in the nature of a letter written to amuse a sick friend. Too much art, particularly in our time, is only a letter written to oneself.

W. H. Auden

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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
Art
Amuse
Nature
Letter
Much
Particularly
Good
Letters
Time
Oneself
Sick
Friend
Written

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All pity is self-pity.
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As a rule, it was the pleasure-haters who became unjust.
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Who on earth invented the silly convention that it is boring or impolite to talk shop? Nothing is more interesting to listen to, especially if the shop is not one's own.
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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.
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Without communication with the dead, a fully human life is not possible.
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If time were the wicked sheriff in a horse opera, I'd pay for riding lessons and take his gun away.
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In times of joy, all of us wished we possessed a tail we could wag.
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What answer to the meaning of existence should one require beyond the right to exercise one's gifts?
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There is a great deal of difference in believing something still, and believing it again.
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To ask the hard question is simple.
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It takes little talent to see what lies under one's nose, a good deal to know in what direction to point that organ.
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Encased in talent like a uniform, The rank of every poet is well known They can amaze us like a thunderstorm, Or die so young, or live for years alone.
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The only way to spend New Year's Eve is either quietly with friends or in a brothel. Otherwise when the evening ends and people pair off, someone is bound to be left in tears.
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I'll love you, dear, I'll love you till China and Africa meet and the river jumps over the mountain and the salmon sing in the street.
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Goodness is easier to recognize than to define.
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A small grove massacred to the last ash, An oak with heart-rot, give away the show: This great society is going to smash They cannot fool us with how fast they go, How much they cost each other and the gods. A culture is no better than its woods.
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To have a sense of sin means to feel guilty at there being an ethical choice to make, a guilt which, however good I may become, remains unchanged.
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Few can remember clearly when innocence came to a sudden end, the moment at which we ask for the first time: Am I loved?
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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.
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Words have no word for words that are not true.
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