W.H. Auden Quotes

I smell blood and an era of prominent madmen.

Some books are undeservedly forgotten; none are undeservedly remembered.

Base words are uttered only by the base
And can for such at once be understood;
But noble platitudes - ah, there's a case
Where the most careful scrutiny is needed
To tell a voice that's genuinely good
From one that's base but merely has succeeded.

Language is the mother, not the handmaiden, of thought; words will tell you things you never thought or felt before.

In the eyes of others a man is a poet if he has written one good poem. In his own he is only a poet at the moment when he is making his last revision to a new poem. The moment before, he was still only a potential poet; the moment after, he is a man who has ceased to write poetry, perhaps forever.

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

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The religious definition of truth is not that it is universal but that it is absolute.

Happy the hare at morning, for she cannot read
The hunter's waking thoughts.

If you want romance, fuck a journalist.

Poetry might be defined as the clear expression of mixed feelings.

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 wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

You shall love your crooked neighbour, with your crooked heart.

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.

I will love you forever" swears the poet. I find this easy to swear too. "I will love you at 4:15 pm next Tuesday" - Is that still as easy?

O stand, stand at the window
As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbour
With your crooked heart.

Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.

And each in the cell of himself is almost convinced of his freedom.

Poetry makes nothing happen.

All the rest is silence
On the other side of the wall;
And the silence ripeness,
And the ripeness all.