W.H. Auden Quotes
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.
Drama is based on the Mistake.
Every autobiography is concerned with two characters, a Don Quixote, the Ego, and a Sancho Panza, the Self.
Every American poet feels that the whole responsibility for contemporary poetry has fallen upon his shoulders, that he is a literary aristocracy of one.
It's frightfully important for a writer to be his age, not to be younger or older than he is. One might ask, "What should I write at the age of sixty-four," but never, "What should I write in 1940."
Without Art, we should have no notion of the sacred; without Science, we should always worship false gods.
The glacier knocks in the cupboard, The desert sighs in the bed, And the crack in the teacup opens A lane to the land of the dead.
In addition to English, at least one ancient language, probably Greek or Hebrew, and two modern languages would be required.
The basic stimulus to the intelligence is doubt, a feeling that the meaning of an experience is not self-evident.
I know nothing, except what everyone knows - if there when Grace dances, I should dance.
The slogan of Hell: Eat or be eaten. The slogan of Heaven: Eat and be eaten.
In a world of prayer, we are all equal in the sense that each of us is a unique person, with a unique perspective on the world, a member of a class of one.
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.
All wishes, whatever their apparent content, have the same and unvarying meaning: "I refuse to be what I am."
Genealogies are admirable things, provided they do not encourage the curious delusion that some families are older than others.
Machines are beneficial to the degree that they eliminate the need for labor, harmful to the degree that they eliminate the need for skill.
About suffering they were never wrong, The Old Masters; How well they understood Its human position; how it takes place While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along.
How happy the lot of the mathematician. He is judged solely by his peers, and the standard is so high that no colleague or rival can ever win a reputation he does not deserve.
All works of art are commissioned in the sense that no artist can create one by a simple act of will but must wait until what he believes to be a good idea for a work comes to him.
The class distinctions proper to a democratic society are not those of rank or money, still less, as is apt to happen when these are abandoned, of race, but of age.
Far from his illness The wolves ran on through the evergreen forests, The peasant river was untempted by the fashionable quays; By mourning tongues The death of the poet was kept from his poems.
Aside from purely technical analysis, nothing can be said about music, except when it is bad; when it is good, one can only listen and be grateful.
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone. Silence the pianos and with muffled drum Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
Dogmatic theological statements are neither logical propositions nor poetic utterances. They are ''shaggy dog'' stories; they have a point, but he who tries too hard to get it will miss it.
