Children Quotes by W. H. Auden

12 Children quotes by W. H. Auden

Auden’s take on youth appears in these twelve lines, offering a taste of his lyrical depth. The collection is modest, yet each verse hints at the larger questions he weaves around childhood.

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The countenances of children, like those of animals, are masks, not faces, for they have not yet developed a significant profile of…

W. H. Auden

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Time and fevers burn away Individual beauty from Thoughtful children, and the grave Proves the child ephemeral

W. H. Auden

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A man has his distinctive personal scent which his wife, his children and his dog can recognize. A crowd has a generalized…

W. H. Auden

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Anyone who has a child today should train him to be either a physicist or a ballet dancer. Then he'll escape.

W. H. Auden

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Political history is far too criminal to be a fit subject of study for the young. Children should acquire their heroes and…

W. H. Auden

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We do not change as we grow up. The difference between the child and the adult is that the former doesn't know…

W. H. Auden

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Lost in a haunted wood, Children afraid of the night Who have never been happy or good.

W. H. Auden

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the child unlucky in his little State, Some hearth where freedom is excluded, A hive whose honey is fear and worry, Feels…

W. H. Auden

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We are not commanded (or forbidden) to love our mates, our children, our friends, our country because such affections come naturally to…

W. H. Auden

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God is Love, we are taught as children to believe. But when we first begin to get some inkling of how He…

W. H. Auden

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Our researchers into Public Opinion are content That he held the proper opinions for the time of year; When there was peace,…

W. H. Auden

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To pray is to pay attention to something or someone other than oneself. Whenever a man so concentrates his attention - on…

W. H. Auden

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More by W. H. Auden

Pleasure is by no means an infallible critical guide, but it is the least fallible.

W. H. Auden

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Why doesn't the United States take over the monarchy and unite with England? England does have important assets. Naturally the longer you wait, the…

W. H. Auden

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The commonest ivory tower is that of the average man, the state of passivity towards experience.

W. H. Auden

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

W. H. Auden

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Most poetry is the utterance of a man in some state of passion, love, joy, grief, rage, etc., and no doubt this is as…

W. H. Auden

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Men will pay large sums to whores for telling them they are not bores.

W. H. Auden

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If age, which is certainly Just as wicked as youth, look any wiser, It is only that youth is still able to believe It…

W. H. Auden

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“Those to whom evil is done, do evil in return”

W. H. Auden

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I and the public know What all schoolchildren learn, Those to whom evil is done Do evil in return.

W. H. Auden

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One cannot walk through an assembly factory and not feel that one is in Hell.

W. H. Auden

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How happy the lot of the mathematician. He is judged solely by his peers, and the standard is so high that no colleague or…

W. H. Auden

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Perhaps there is only one cardinal sin: impatience. Because of impatience we were driven out of Paradise, because of impatience we cannot return.

W. H. Auden

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