W. H. Auden Quotes

“A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.”

“Some books are undeservedly forgotten; none are undeservedly remembered.”

Squares and Oblongs, in Poets at Work (1948), p. 170

“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.”

"Reading", p. 10
The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays (1962)

“No opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible.”

Funeral Blues (1936)

“A professor is one who talks in someone else's sleep.”

"Notes on Music and Opera", p. 472
The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays (1962)

“To-morrow the rediscovery of romantic love,
The photographing of ravens; all the fun under
Liberty's masterful shadow;
To-morrow the hour of the pageant-master and the musician, The beautiful roar of the chorus under the dome;
To-morrow the exchanging of tips on the breeding of terriers,
The eager election of chairmen
By the sudden forest of hands. But to-day the struggle.To-morrow for the young the poets exploding like bombs,
The walks by the lake, the weeks of perfect communion;
To-morrow the bicycle races
Through the suburbs on summer evenings. But to-day the struggle.”

Often attributed to Auden, but he was repeating an anonymous joke; he did not claim to have originated it. See "Who Wrote Auden's Definition of a Professor?" http://www.audensociety.org/definition.html <br class="br">Misattributed

W. H. Auden Quotes about love

W. H. Auden book Spain

Source: Spain (1937), Lines 81–92

“How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.”

“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,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.”

The More Loving One (1957)

“Cold, impossible, ahead
Lifts the mountain's lovely head
Whose white waterfall could bless
Travellers in their last distress.”

As I Walked Out One Evening (1937)

“Lay your sleeping head, my love
Human on my faithless arm;
Time and fevers burn away
Individual beauty from
Thoughtful children, and the grave
Proves the child ephemeral;
But in my arms till break of day
Let the living creature lie:
Mortal, guilty, but to me
The entirely beautiful.”

First published in book form in Look, Stranger! (1936; US title On this Island)
Source: Autumn Song (1936), Lines 17–20

“The image of myself which I try to create in my own mind in order that I may love myself is very different from the image which I try to create in the minds of others in order that they may love me.”

Lay your sleeping head, my love (1937), lines 1–2, written January 1937; also known as Lullaby.

“In the late Middle Ages there were, no doubt, many persons in monasteries and convents who had no business there and should have been out in the world earning an honest living, but today it may very well be that there are many persons trying to earn a living in the world and driven by failure into mental homes whose true home would be the cloister.”

"Hic et Ille", p. 104
The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays (1962)

W. H. Auden: Trending quotes

“When I find myself in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a drawing room full of dukes.”

"The Protestant Mystics", p. 73
Forewords and Afterwords (1973)

“Evil is unspectacular and always human, and shares our bed and eats at our own table.”

"The Poet & The City", p. 81
The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays (1962)

“The idea of a sacrificial victim is not new; but that it should be the victim who chooses to be sacrificed, and the sacrificers who deny that any sacrifice has been made, is very new.”

W. H. Auden Quotes

“One cannot review a bad book without showing off.”

Assessing St. Augustine's perspectives in "Augustus to Augustine", p. 37
Forewords and Afterwords (1973)
Context: Man … always acts either self-loving, just for the hell of it, or God-loving, just for the heaven of it; his reasons, his appetites are secondary motivations. Man chooses either life or death, but he chooses; everything he does, from going to the toilet to mathematical speculation, is an act of religious worship, either of God or of himself.
Lastly by the classical apotheosis of Man-God, Augustine opposes the Christian belief in Jesus Christ, the God-Man. The former is a Hercules who compels recognition by the great deeds he does in establishing for the common people in the law, order and prosperity they cannot establish for themselves, by his manifestation of superior power; the latter reveals to fallen man that God is love by suffering, i. e. by refusing to compel recognition, choosing instead to be a victim of man's self-love. The idea of a sacrificial victim is not new; but that it should be the victim who chooses to be sacrificed, and the sacrificers who deny that any sacrifice has been made, is very new.

“The Ogre does what ogres can,
Deeds quite impossible for Man,
But one prize is beyond his reach,
The Ogre cannot master Speech:
About a subjugated plain,
Among its desperate and slain,
The Ogre stalks with hands on hips,
While drivel gushes from his lips.”

"Reading", p. 11
The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays (1962)

“Most people are even less original in their dreaming than in their waking life; their dreams are more monotonous than their thoughts and oddly enough, more literary.”

"August 1968"

“The stars are dead. The animals will not look.
We are left alone with our day, and the time is short, and
History to the defeated
May say Alas but cannot help nor pardon.”

"Walter de la Mare", p. 393
Forewords and Afterwords (1973)

W. H. Auden book Spain

Source: Spain (1937), Lines 101–104

“Without Art, we should have no notion of the sacred; without Science, we should always worship false gods.”

“Young people, who are still uncertain of their identity, often try on a succession of masks in the hope of finding the one which suits them — the one, in fact, which is not a mask.”

"The Virgin & The Dynamo", p. 62
The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays (1962)

“About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters.”

"One of the Family", p. 369
Forewords and Afterwords (1973)

W. H. Auden Musée des Beaux Arts

Source: Musée des Beaux Arts (1938), Lines 1–2

“We are all on earth to help others. What on earth the others are here for, I can't imagine.”

“All sin tends to be addictive, and the terminal point of addiction is what is called damnation.”

Often cited as by Auden without attribution, this quotation has been traced to John Foster Hall (1867-1945), an English comedian known as the Reverend Vivian Foster, Vicar of Mirth. Full history with sound recording http://audensociety.org/vivianfoster.html <br class="br">Misattributed

“I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.”

"Hell"
A Certain World: A Commonplace Book (1970)

W. H. Auden September 1, 1939

Source: September 1, 1939 (1939), Lines 19–22

“The condition of mankind is, and always has been, so miserable and depraved that, if anyone were to say to the poet: "For God's sake stop singing and do something useful like putting on the kettle or fetching bandages," what just reason could he give for refusing? But nobody says this. The self-appointed unqualified nurse says: "You are to sing the patient a song which will make him believe that I, and I alone, can cure him. If you can't or won't, I shall confiscate your passport and send you to the mines." And the poor patient in his delirium cries: "Please sing me a song which will give me sweet dreams instead of nightmares. If you succeed, I will give you a penthouse in New York or a ranch in Arizona."”

“Out of the air a voice without a face
Proved by statistics that some cause was just
In tones as dry and level as the place:
No one was cheered and nothing was discussed…”

"Writing", p. 27
The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays (1962)

W. H. Auden book The Shield of Achilles

The Shield of Achilles (1952)

“No person can be a great leader unless he takes genuine joy in the successes of those under him.”

“What the mass media offers is not popular art, but entertainment which is intended to be consumed like food, forgotten, and replaced by a new dish.”

Not by Auden; sources from the 1980s attribute it to the Rev. W. A. Nance (the name seems to have been confused with Auden's).
Misattributed

“Money is the necessity that frees us from necessity.”

"The Poet & The City", p. 83
The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays (1962)
Context: What the mass media offers is not popular art, but entertainment which is intended to be consumed like food, forgotten, and replaced by a new dish. This is bad for everyone; the majority lose all genuine taste of their own, and the minority become cultural snobs.

“A craftsman knows in advance what the finished result will be, while the artist knows only what it will be when he has finished it.”

"A Poet of the Actual", p. 266
Forewords and Afterwords (1973)
Context: Money is the necessity that frees us from necessity. Of all novelists in any country, Trollope best understands the role of money. Compared with him even Balzac is a romantic.

“Machines have no political opinions, but they have profound political effects. They demand a strict regimentation of time, and, by abolishing the need for manual skill, have transformed the majority of the population from workers into laborers.”

"A Poet of the Actual", p. 265
Forewords and Afterwords (1973)
Context: A craftsman knows in advance what the finished result will be, while the artist knows only what it will be when he has finished it. But it is unbecoming in an artist to talk about inspiration; that is the reader's business.

“He suffers from one great literary defect, which is often found in lonely geniuses: he never knows when to stop.”

"A Russian Aesthete", p. 279
Forewords and Afterwords (1973)
Context: Machines have no political opinions, but they have profound political effects. They demand a strict regimentation of time, and, by abolishing the need for manual skill, have transformed the majority of the population from workers into laborers. There are, that is to say, fewer and fewer jobs which a man can find a pride and satisfaction in doing well, more and more which have no interest in themselves and can be valued only for the money they provide.

“I do not believe an artist's life throws much light upon his works. I do believe, however, that, more often than most people realize, his works may throw light upon his life.”

On Søren Kierkegaard, in "A Knight of Doleful Countenance", p. 192
Forewords and Afterwords (1973)
Context: He suffers from one great literary defect, which is often found in lonely geniuses: he never knows when to stop. Lonely people are apt to fall in love with the sound of their own voice, as Narcissus fell in love with his reflection, not out of conceit but out of despair of finding another who will listen and respond.

“The mystics themselves do not seem to have believed their physical and mental sufferings to be a sign of grace, but it is unfortunate that it is precisely physical manifestations which appeal most to the religiosity of the mob.”

"The Greatest of the Monsters", p. 247
Forewords and Afterwords (1973)
Context: I said earlier that I do not believe an artist's life throws much light upon his works. I do believe, however, that, more often than most people realize, his works may throw light upon his life. An artist with certain imaginative ideas in his head may then involve himself in relationships which are congenial to them.

“Man … always acts either self-loving, just for the hell of it, or God-loving, just for the heaven of it; his reasons, his appetites are secondary motivations.”

"The Protestant Mystics", p. 72
Forewords and Afterwords (1973)
Context: The mystics themselves do not seem to have believed their physical and mental sufferings to be a sign of grace, but it is unfortunate that it is precisely physical manifestations which appeal most to the religiosity of the mob. A woman might spend twenty years nursing lepers without having any notice taken of her, but let her once exhibit the stigmata or live for long periods on nothing but the Host and water, and in no time the crowd will be clamoring for her beatification.

“In most poetic expressions of patriotism, it is impossible to distinguish what is one of the greatest human virtues from the worst human vice, collective egotism.”

“We would rather be ruined than changed
We would rather die in our dread
Than climb the cross of the moment
And let our illusions die.”

"C.P. Cavafy", p. 341
Forewords and Afterwords (1973)
Context: In most poetic expressions of patriotism, it is impossible to distinguish what is one of the greatest human virtues from the worst human vice, collective egotism.
The virtue of patriotism has been extolled most loudly and publicly by nations that are in the process of conquering others, by the Roman, for example, in the first century B. C., the French in the 1790s, the English in the nineteenth century, and the Germans in the first half of the twentieth. To such people, love of one's country involves denying the right of others, of the Gauls, the Italians, the Indians, the Poles, to love theirs.

W. H. Auden book The Age of Anxiety

Epilogue
The Age of Anxiety (1948)

“Every autobiography is concerned with two characters, a Don Quixote, the Ego, and a Sancho Panza, the Self.”

“To ask the hard question is simple,
The simple act of the confused will.”

"Hic et Ille", p. 96
The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays (1962)

“Unendowed with wealth or pity,
Little birds with scarlet legs
Sitting on their speckled eggs,
Eye each flu-infected city. Altogether elsewhere, vast
Herds of reindeer move across
Miles and miles of golden moss,
Silently and very fast.”

To Ask the Hard Question is Simple, first published in book form in Poems (1930)

“The truly tragic kind of suffering is the kind produced and defiantly insisted upon by the hero himself so that, instead of making him better, it makes him worse and when he dies he is not reconciled to the law but defiant, that is, damned. Lear is not a tragic hero, Othello is.”

The Fall of Rome (1947), lines 21–28

“The surest sign that a man has a genuine taste of his own is that he is uncertain of it.”

"The Greeks and Us", p. 21
Forewords and Afterwords (1973)

“Every day America's destroyed and re-created,
America is what you do,
America is I and you,
America is what you choose to make it.”

"Reading", p. 6
The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays (1962)

“I am beginning to lose patience
With my personal relations.
They are not deep
And they are not cheap.”

Paul Bunyan

“The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.”

Case Histories (1930)

“One can only blaspheme if one believes.”

Funeral Blues (1936)

“Death is the sound of distant thunder at a picnic.”

"Concerning the Unpredictable", p. 472
Forewords and Afterwords (1973)

“To some degree every American poet feels that the whole responsibility for contemporary poetry has fallen upon his shoulders, that he is a literary aristocracy of one.”

A misquotation of a haiku by Auden found elsewhere on this page ("Thoughts of his own death" etc.)
Misattributed
Variant: Thoughts of his own death,
like the distant roll
of thunder at a picnic.

“Genealogies are admirable things, provided they do not encourage the curious delusion that some families are older than others.”

"American Poetry", p. 367
The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays (1962)

“In general, when reading a scholarly critic, one profits more from his quotations than from his comments.”

"As It Seemed to Us", p. 498
Forewords and Afterwords (1973)

“I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.”

"Reading", p. 9
The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays (1962)

W. H. Auden September 1, 1939

Source: September 1, 1939 (1939), Lines 1–11

“I don't think the mystical experience can be verbalized. When the ego disappears, so does power over language.”

“In any modern city, a great deal of our energy has to be expended in not seeing, not hearing, not smelling. An inhabitant of New York who possessed the sensory acuteness of an African Bushman would very soon go mad.”

Source: Paris Review interview (1972), p. 266

“Put the car away; when life fails
What's the good of going to Wales?
Here am I, here are you:
But what does it mean? What are we going to do?”

"The Justice of Dame Kind", p. 464
Forewords and Afterwords (1973)

“A poet, qua poet, has only one political duty, namely, in his own writing to set an example of the correct use of his mother tongue, which is always being corrupted. When words lose their meaning, physical force takes over.”

It's no use raising a shout (1929), first published in book form in Poems (1930)

“Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can: all of them make me laugh.”

Source: Paris Review interview (1972), p. 251

“At first critics classified authors as Ancients, that is to say, Greek and Latin authors, and Moderns, that is to say, every post-Classical Author. Then they classified them by eras, the Augustans, the Victorians, etc., and now they classify them by decades, the writers of the '30's, '40's, etc. Very soon, it seems, they will be labeling authors, like automobiles, by the year.”

"Notes on the Comic", p. 372
The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays (1962)

“Let us then
Consider rather the incessant Now of
The traveler through time, his tired mind
Biased towards bigness since his body must
Exaggerate to exist, possessed by hope…”

"Reading", p. 12
The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays (1962)

W. H. Auden book The Age of Anxiety

Prologue
The Age of Anxiety (1948)

“Now is the age of anxiety.”

“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.”

Widely attributed online to Auden, this phrase does not occur anywhere in his writings. It is apparently a confused recollection of the title of his long poem The Age of Anxiety (1947). (The phrase "age of anxiety" occurs only in the title of the poem, not in the text, nor in anything else by Auden.)
Misattributed

“Whatever the field under discussion, those who engage in debate must not only believe in each other's good faith, but also in their capacity to arrive at the truth.”

"The Guilty Vicarage", p. 157
The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays (1962)

“Politics cannot be a science, because in politics theory and practice cannot be separated, and the sciences depend upon their separation.”

"The Protestant Mystics", p. 52
Forewords and Afterwords (1973)

“In a national capital Mirabeau and his set
Attacked mystery; the packed galleries roared
And history marched to the drums of a clear idea,
The aim of the Rational City, quick to admire,
Quick to tire.”

"Tyranny”
A Certain World: A Commonplace Book (1970)