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W. H. Auden

Read through the most famous quotes from W. H. Auden




No human being is innocent, but there is a class of innocent human actions called Games.


— W. H. Auden


#being #called #class #games #human

No poet or novelist wishes he were the only one who ever lived, but most of them wish they were the only one alive, and quite a number fondly believe their wish has been granted.


— W. H. Auden


#been #believe #ever #fondly #granted

Now is the age of anxiety.


— W. H. Auden


#anxiety #now

Some writers confuse authenticity, which they ought always to aim at, with originality, which they should never bother about.


— W. H. Auden


#aim #always #authenticity #bother #confuse

You owe it to all of us all get on with what you're good at.


— W. H. Auden


#good #owe #us #you

A poet can write about a man slaying a dragon, but not about a man pushing a button that releases a bomb.


— W. H. Auden


#bomb #button #dragon #man #poet

A poet is a professional maker of verbal objects.


— W. H. Auden


#objects #poet #professional #verbal

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


— W. H. Auden


#become #goes #immediate #like #music

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.


— W. H. Auden


#art #artist #believes #comes #commissioned

Art is our chief means of breaking bread with the dead.


— W. H. Auden


#bread #breaking #chief #dead #means






About W. H. Auden

W. H. Auden Quotes




Did you know about W. H. Auden?

By the time of Auden's death in 1973 he had attained the status of a respected elder statesman. " Until he was fifteen he expected to become a mining engineer but his passion for words had already begun. His reconversion was influenced partly by what he called the "sainthood" of Charles Williams whom he had met in 1937 partly by reading Søren Kierkegaard and Reinhold Niebuhr; his existential this-worldly Christianity became a central element in his life.

After his death some of his poems notably "Funeral Blues" ("Stop all the clocks") "Musée des Beaux Arts" "Refugee Blues" "The Unknown Citizen" and "September 1 1939" became known to a much wider public than during his lifetime through films broadcasts and popular media. In the 1950s and 1960s many of his poems focused on the ways in which words revealed and concealed emotions and he took a particular interest in writing opera librettos a form ideally suited to direct expression of strong feelings. Wystan Hugh Auden (pron.

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