W. H. Auden quotes - page 9

Yet no one hears his own remarks as prose. (W. H. Auden)
There's only one good test of pornography. Get twelve normal men to read the book, and then ask them, Did you get an erection If the answer is Yes from a majority of the twelve, then the book is pornographic. View quote
W. H. Auden
A man has his distinctive personal scent which his wife, his children and his dog can recognize. A crowd has a generalized stink. The public is odorless. View quote
W. H. Auden
Harrow the house of the dead look shining at; New styles of architecture, a change of heart. View quote
W. H. Auden
There is no such thing as the State And no one exists alone Hunger allows no choice To the citizen or the police We must love one another or die. View quote
W. H. Auden
To ask the hard question is simple. View quote
W. H. Auden
Literary confessors are contemptible, like beggars who exhibit their sores for money, but not so contemptible as the public that buys their books. View quote
W. H. Auden
Lay your sleeping head, my love, Human on my faithless arm. View quote
W. H. Auden
Anyone who has a child today should train him to be either a physicist or a ballet dancer. Then he'll escape. View quote
W. H. Auden
To the man-in-the-street, who, I'm sorry to say; Is a keen observer of life, The word Intellectual suggests straight away; A man who's untrue to his wife. View quote
W. H. Auden
A shilling life will give you all the facts. (W. H. Auden)
Does God judge us by appearances I Suspect that He does. View quote
W. H. Auden
You will be a poet because you will always be humiliated. View quote
W. H. Auden
It's impossible to represent a saint in Art. It becomes boring. Perhaps because he is, like the Saturday Evening Post people, in the position of having almost infinitely free will. View quote
W. H. Auden
It's usually the stupid people that develop long illnesses. You need more than indolence and selfishness, you need endurance to make a good patient. View quote
W. H. Auden
Proper names are poetry in the raw. Like all poetry they are untranslatable. View quote
W. H. Auden
Intellectual disgrace; Stares from every human face, And the seas of pity lie; Locked and frozen in each eye. View quote
W. H. Auden
Christmas and Easter can be subjects for poetry, but Good Friday, like Auschwitz, cannot. The reality is so horrible, it is not surprising that people should have found it a stumbling block to faith. View quote
W. H. Auden
Why doesn't the United States take over the monarchy and unite with England England does have important assets. Naturally the longer you wait, the more they will dwindle. At least you could use it for a summer resort instead of Maine. View quote
W. H. Auden
Pleasure is by no means an infallible guide, but it is the least fallible. View quote
W. H. Auden
Dogmatic theological statements are neither logical propositions nor poetic utterances. They are shaggy dog stories they have a point, but he who tries too hard to get it will miss it. (W. H. Auden)
Of course, Behaviourism 'works'. So does torture. Give me a no-nonsense, down-to-earth behaviourist, a few drugs, and simple electrical appliances, and in six months I will have him reciting the Athanasian creed in public. View quote
W. H. Auden
Nobody knows what the cause is, Though some pretend they do; It's like some hidden assassin; Waiting to strike at you. Childless women get it, And men when they retire; It's as if there had to be some outlet; For their foiled creative. View quote
W. H. Auden
Alone, alone, about the dreadful wood; Of conscious evil runs a lost mankind, Dreading to find its Father. View quote
W. H. Auden
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. View quote
W. H. Auden