Home / Quotes / Quote by W. H. Auden

Quote by W. H. Auden

“Harrow the house of the dead; look shining at New styles of architecture, a change of heart.”

Quote by W. H. Auden

Author

W. H. Auden was a prominent 20th-century poet, celebrated for his innovative and influential poetry. His works frequently delve into themes of love, politics, and the human experience, and he is a pivotal figure in the literary movement known as New Criticism. Born on February 21, 1907, in York, England, Auden passed away on September 29, 1973. more

You May Also Like

“Private faces in public places Are wiser and nicer Than public faces in private places.”

Author:W. H. Auden

“To my generation no other English poet seemed so perfectly to express the sensibility of a male adolescent. If I do not now turn to him very often, I am eternally grateful to him for the joy he gave me in my youth.”

Ifs Joy Turns Generations Youth Poet Grateful Males Sensibility My Generation

Author:W. H. Auden

“The poet who writes "free" verse is like Robinson Crusoe on his desert island: he must do all his cooking, laundry and darning for himself. In a few exceptional cases, this manly independence produces something original and impressive, but more often the result is squalor - dirty sheets on the unmade bed and empty bottles on the unswept floor.”

“The law cannot forgive, for the law has not been wronged, only broken; only persons can be wronged. The law can pardon, but it can only pardon what it has the power to punish.”

Persons Law Broken Forgiving Pardon Wronged

Author:W. H. Auden

“All wishes, whatever their apparent content, have the same and unvarying meaning: "I refuse to be what I am."”

Author:W. H. Auden

“A god who is both self-sufficient and content to remain so could not interest us enough to raise the question of his existence.”

Self Enough Interest Existence Raises Sufficient Self Sufficient

Author:W. H. Auden

“The truly tragic kind of suffering is the kind produced and defiantly insisted upon by the hero himself so that, instead of making him better, it makes him worse and when he dies he is not reconciled to the law but defiant, that is, damned. Lear is not a tragic hero, Othello is.”

Kind Law Suffering Dies Hero Tragic Lear Tragic Hero

Author:W. H. Auden

“Most people call something profound, not because it is near some important truth but because it is distant from ordinary life. Thus, darkness is profound to the eye, silence to the ear; what-is-not is the profundity of what-is.”

People Important Eye Silence Darkness Ordinary Ears Profound Ordinary Life Profundity

Author:W. H. Auden

“A poet, qua poet, has only one political duty, namely, in his own writing to set an example of the correct use of his mother tongue, which is always being corrupted. When words lose their meaning, physical force takes over.”

Writing Use Political Mother Force Loses Example Poet Duty Tongue Mother Tongue Physical Force

Author:W. H. Auden

“I don't think the mystical experience can be verbalized. When the ego disappears, so does power over language.”

Thinking Doe Language Ego Disappear Mystical Mystical Experiences

Author:W. H. Auden