God may reduce you on Judgment Day to tears of shame, reciting by heart the poems you would have written, had your life been good. W. H. Auden More Quotes by W. H. Auden More Quotes From W. H. Auden I don't think the mystical experience can be verbalized. When the ego disappears, so does power over language. W. H. Auden mystical-experiences ego thinking No hero is mortal till he dies. W. H. Auden dies demise hero Cats can be very funny, and have the oddest ways of showing they're glad to see you. W. H. Auden cat glad way Hemingway is terribly limited. His technique is good for short stories, for people who meet once in a bar very late at night, but do not enter into relations. But not for the novel. W. H. Auden writing night people Words have no word for words that are not true. W. H. Auden I used to try and concentrate the poem so much that there wasn't a word that wasn't essential. This leads to becoming boring and constipated. W. H. Auden becoming essentials trying A poet's hope: to be, like some valley cheese, local, but prized elsewhere. W. H. Auden cooking hope food Had Greek civilization never existed ... we would never have become fully conscious. W. H. Auden conscious greek civilization 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. W. H. Auden fate long thinking About suffering they were never wrong, The Old Masters. W. H. Auden masters suffering Money is the necessity that frees us from necessity. W. H. Auden money Private faces in public places Are wiser and nicer Than public faces in private places. W. H. Auden wiser faces Time will say nothing but I told you so. W. H. Auden told-you-so time To me Art's subject is the human clay, / And landscape but a background to a torso; / All Cezanne's apples I would give away / For one small Goya or a Daumier. W. H. Auden apples giving art There is no love; W. H. Auden various envy sadness My poetry doesn't change from place to place - it changes with the years. It's very important to be one's age. You get ideas you have to turn down - 'I'm sorry, no longer'; 'I'm sorry, not yet. W. H. Auden maturity sorry years The desires of the heart are as crooked as corkscrews Not to be born is the best for man The second best is a formal order The dance's pattern, dance while you can. Dance, dance, for the figure is easy The tune is catching and will not stop Dance till the stars come down from the rafters Dance, dance, dance till you drop. W. H. Auden stars heart men 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. W. H. Auden police citizens choices How happy is the lot of the mathematician! He is judged solely by his peers, and the standard is so high that no colleague or rival can ever win a reputation he does not deserve. No cashier writes a letter to the press complaining about the incomprehensibility of Modern Mathematics and comparing it unfavorably with the good old days when mathematicians were content to paper irregularly shaped rooms and fill bathtubs without closing the waste pipe. W. H. Auden paper winning writing The glacier knocks in the cupboard, The desert sighs in the bed, And the crack in the teacup opens A lane to the land of the dead. W. H. Auden cracks bed land
