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
art culture earn fact money poet practicing sad talking
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.
money
Money is the necessity that frees us from necessity.
money book confession
Literary confessors are contemptible, like beggars who exhibit their sores for money, but not so contemptible as the public that buys their books.
birthday money time
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.
art money writing
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.
technique crafts sincerity
Sincerity is technique.
curate full room science shabby
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.
english-poet
For who can bear to feel himself forgotten?
voice
All I have is a voice.
pay-the-price people use
People always get what they want. But there is a price for everything. Failures are either those who do not know what they want or are not prepared to pay the price asked them. The price varies from individual to individual. Some get things at bargain-sale prices, others only at famine prices. But it is no use grumbling. Whatever price you are asked, you must pay.
games class action
No human being is innocent, but there is a class of innocent human actions called Games.
change growth religion
We would rather be ruined than changed. We would rather die in our dread than climb the cross of the moment and let our illusions die.
love motivational strength
Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.
men dead-man rate
A dead man who never caused others to die seldom rates a statue.