W. H. Auden
W. H. Auden
Wystan Hugh Audenwas an English poet, who later became an American citizen. He is best known for love poems such as "Funeral Blues," poems on political and social themes such as "September 1, 1939" and "The Shield of Achilles," poems on cultural and psychological themes such as The Age of Anxiety, and poems on religious themes such as "For the Time Being" and "Horae Canonicae." He was born in York, grew up in and near Birmingham in a professional middle-class...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth21 February 1907
light play
The lights must never go out, The music must always play
names nicknames
Proper names are poetry in the raw. Like all poetry they are untranslatable.
inspirational graduation education
A professor is someone who talks in someone else's sleep.
grateful analysis be-grateful
Aside from purely technical analysis, nothing can be said about music, except when it is bad; when it is good, one can only listen and be grateful.
Words have no word for words that are not true.
believe fields debate
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.
hope food cooking
A poet's hope: to be, like some valley cheese, local, but prized elsewhere.
song clever stupid
Precisely because we do not communicate by singing, a song can be out of place but not out of character; it is just as credible that a stupid person should sing beautifully as that a clever person should do so.
voice noble cases
Base words are uttered only by the base And can for such at once be understood; But noble platitudes — ah, there's a case Where the most careful scrutiny is needed To tell a voice that's genuinely good From one that's base but merely has succeeded.
life art beer
In the end, art is small beer. The really serious things are earning one's living so as not to be a parasite and loving one's neighbor.
ideas march clear
History marches to the drum of a clear idea.
love character mean
A doctor, like anyone else who has to deal with human beings, each of them unique, cannot be a scientist; he is either, like the surgeon, a craftsman, or, like the physician and the psychologist, an artist. This means that in order to be a good doctor a man must also have a good character, that is to say, whatever weaknesses and foibles he may have, he must love his fellow human beings in the concrete and desire their good before his own.
heart bears forgotten
And none will hear the postman’s knock Without a quickening of the heart. For who can bear to feel himself forgotten?
smell doe invisible
Music can be made anywhere, is invisible and does not smell.