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
thinking let-me knows
Let me see what I wrote so I know what I think
thinking style suffering
Slavery is so intolerable a condition that the slave can hardly escape deluding himself into thinking that he is choosing to obey his master's commands when, in fact, he is obliged to. Most slaves of habit suffer from this delusion and so do some writers, enslaved by an all too personal style.
character thinking personality
One of the troubles of our times is that we are all, I think, precocious as personalities and backward as characters.
thinking personal-knowledge guessing
The most difficult problem in personal knowledge, whether of oneself or of others, is the problem of guessing when to think as a historian and when to think as an anthropologist.
thinking firsts study
There has been a vast output of critical studies in contemporary poetry, some of them first rate, but I do not think that , as a rule, a poet should read them.
fate thinking long
So long as we think of it objectively, time is Fate or Chance, the factor in our lives for which we are not responsible, and about which we can do nothing; but when we begin to think of it subjectively, we feel responsible for our time, and the notion of punctuality arises.
art thinking poetry
The primary function of poetry, as of all the arts, is to make us more aware of ourselves and the world around us. I do not know if such increased awareness makes us more moral or more efficient. I hope not. I think it makes us more human, and I am quite certain it makes us more difficult to deceive.
thinking mystical-experiences ego
I don't think the mystical experience can be verbalized. When the ego disappears, so does power over language.
music art thinking
A verbal art like poetry is reflective; it stops to think. Music is immediate, it goes on to become.
thinking self people
It is axiomatic that we should all think of ourselves as being more sensitive than other people because, when we are insensitive in our dealings with others, we cannot be aware of it at the time; conscious insensitivity is a self-contradiction.
art thinking feelings
Great art is clear thinking about mixed feelings.
work men thinking
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.
thinking two keeping-secrets
You know there are no secrets in America. It's quite different in England, where people think of a secret as a shared relation between two people.
thinking civilization firsts
I think the first prerequisite to civilization is an ability to make polite conversation.