W. H. Auden Biography

W. H. Auden, Poet

Known as	Wystan Hugh Auden
Occup.	Poet
From	England
Born	February 21, 1907 York, England
Died	September 29, 1973
Aged	66 years

W. H. Auden, likewise called Wystan Hugh Auden, was an English-American poet, playwright, as well as author. He was one of one of the most popular poets of the 20th century, known for his distinct style and his comprehensive and usually complicated subject matter.

Auden was born in York, England in 1907 and also attended Oxford College, where he ended up being connected with a group of poets known as the "Auden Generation." His early poetry was identified by a blend of standard forms and also modern motifs, and he was understood for his experienced use language and his capacity to evoke a wide range of feelings in his visitors.

Throughout his job, Auden explored a wide array of themes in his writing, consisting of love, politics, religion, and also the human condition. He was additionally recognized for his witty and also often profane take on these topics, and his work usually consisted of a sharp critique of society as well as society.

Auden was likewise an accomplished dramatist and author, as well as he composed a number of plays as well as vital essays over the course of his profession. His writing was widely applauded for its intelligence, wit, and special perspective, as well as he remains among the most significant poets of the 20th century.

Auden spent much of his later life in the United States and also ended up being an American person in 1946. He died in Vienna, Austria in 1973, however his tradition remains to affect writers and also visitors worldwide.

Our collection contains 60 quotes who is written / told by H. Auden, under the main topics: Death - Music - Poetry.

W. H. Auden Famous Works:

1960 Homage to Clio (Book)
1955 The Shield of Achilles (Book)
1951 Nones (Book)
1947 The Age of Anxiety (Book)
1940 Another Time (Book)
1936 Look, Stranger! (Book)
1932 The Orators (Book)
1930 Poems (Book)

60 Famous quotes by W. H. Auden

"Evil is unspectacular and always human, and shares our bed and eats at our own table"

W. H. Auden

"Thousands have lived without love, not one without water"

W. H. Auden

"In times of joy, all of us wished we possessed a tail we could wag"

W. H. Auden

"History is, strictly speaking, the study of questions; the study of answers belongs to anthropology and sociology"

W. H. Auden

"All sins tend to be addictive, and the terminal point of addiction is damnation"

W. H. Auden

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

W. H. Auden

"Music is the best means we have of digesting time"

W. H. Auden

"We all have these places where shy humiliations gambol on sunny afternoons"

W. H. Auden

"Good can imagine Evil; but Evil cannot imagine Good"

W. H. Auden

"Geniuses are the luckiest of mortals because what they must do is the same as what they most want to do"

W. H. Auden

"It's frightening how easy it is to commit murder in America. Just a drink too much. I can see myself doing it. In England, one feels all the social restraints holding one back. But here, anything can happen"

W. H. Auden

"Choice of attention - to pay attention to this and ignore that - is to the inner life what choice of action is to the outer. In both cases, a man is responsible for his choice and must accept the consequences, whatever they may be"

W. H. Auden

"Death is the sound of distant thunder at a picnic"

W. H. Auden

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

W. H. Auden

"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

"All that we are not stares back at what we are"

W. H. Auden

"The ear tends to be lazy, craves the familiar and is shocked by the unexpected; the eye, on the other hand, tends to be impatient, craves the novel and is bored by repetition"

W. H. Auden

"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"

W. H. Auden

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

W. H. Auden

"Murder is commoner among cooks than among members of any other profession"

W. H. Auden

"We are all here on earth to help others; what on earth the others are here for I don't know"

W. H. Auden

"The countenances of children, like those of animals, are masks, not faces, for they have not yet developed a significant profile of their own"

W. H. Auden

"Music can be made anywhere, is invisible and does not smell"

W. H. Auden

"Murder is unique in that it abolishes the party it injures, so that society has to take the place of the victim and on his behalf demand atonement or grant forgiveness; it is the one crime in which society has a direct interest"

W. H. Auden

"Learn from your dreams what you lack"

W. H. Auden

"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"

W. H. Auden

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

W. H. Auden

"To save your world you asked this man to die; would this man, could he see you now, ask why?"

W. H. Auden

"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

"It takes little talent to see what lies under one's nose, a good deal to know in what direction to point that organ"

W. H. Auden

"Health is the state about which medicine has nothing to say"

W. H. Auden

"For who can bear to feel himself forgotten?"

W. H. Auden

"A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us"

W. H. Auden

"'Healing,' Papa would tell me, 'is not a science, but the intuitive art of wooing nature.'"

W. H. Auden

"Hemingway is terribly limited. His technique is good for short stories, for people who meet once in a bar very late at night, but do not enter into relations. But not for the novel"

W. H. Auden

"Now is the age of anxiety"

W. H. Auden

"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

"Men will pay large sums to whores for telling them they are not bores"

W. H. Auden

"It's 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"

W. H. Auden

"God bless the USA, so large, so friendly, and so rich"

W. H. Auden

"Between friends differences in taste or opinion are irritating in direct proportion to their triviality"

W. H. Auden

"A poet is a professional maker of verbal objects"

W. H. Auden

"Fame often makes a writer vain, but seldom makes him proud"

W. H. Auden

"A tremendous number of people in America work very hard at something that bores them. Even a rich man thinks he has to go down to the office everyday. Not because he likes it but because he can't think of anything else to do"

W. H. Auden

"A professor is someone who talks in someone else's sleep"

W. H. Auden

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

W. H. Auden

"When I am in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a drawing room full of dukes"

W. H. Auden

"Every American poet feels that the whole responsibility for contemporary poetry has fallen upon his shoulders, that he is a literary aristocracy of one"

W. H. Auden

"Before people complain of the obscurity of modern poetry, they should first examine their consciences and ask themselves with how many people and on how many occasions they have genuinely and profoundly shared some experience with another"

W. H. Auden

"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"

W. H. Auden

Next page