Skip to content

W. H. Auden Quotes

1907–1973 England

Wystan Hugh Auden (21 February 1907 – 29 September 1973) was an Anglo-American poet known for his vast poetic work in many forms on many themes.

England
Academics
Critics
Educators
Playwrights

Also known as: Auden, W(ystan) H(ugh), Auden, W. H., Auden, Wystan Hugh, Wystan Hugh Auden

Random W. H. Auden quote

217 quotes

Cathedrals,
Luxury liners laden with souls,
Holding to the east their hulls of stone.

Look, Stranger! (1936) · On This Island (1937)

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

The Dog Beneath the Skin (1935)

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

Poems (1933)

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.

The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays (1962)

Only in rites
can we renounce our oddities
and be truly entired.

Aphorisms are essentially an aristocratic genre of writing.

Foreword to The Viking Book of Aphorisms (1962)

Out on the lawn I lie in bed,
Vega conspicuous overhead.

Look, Stranger! (1936) · On This Island (1937)

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.

Forewords and Afterwords (1973)

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.

Forewords and Afterwords (1973)

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.

Forewords and Afterwords (1973)

A verbal art like poetry is reflective; it stops to think. Music is immediate, it goes on to become.

The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays (1962)

Proper names are poetry in the raw. Like all poetry they are untranslatable.

A Certain World: A Commonplace Book (1970)

And children swarmed to him like settlers. He became a land.

Another Time (1940)

The Godhead is broken like bread. We are the pieces.

Another Time (1940)

What reverence is rightly paid
To a divinity so odd
He lets the Adam whom he made
Perform the Acts of God?

Homage to Clio (1960)

It takes little talent to see clearly what lies under one's nose, a good deal of it to know in which direction to point that organ.

The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays (1962)

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.

The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays (1962)

One can only blaspheme if one believes.

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.

The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays (1962)

I cannot accept the doctrine that in poetry there is a "suspension of belief." A poet must never make a statement simply because it sounds poetically exciting; he must also believe it to be true.

A Certain World: A Commonplace Book (1970)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: W. H. Auden (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.