Needs Quotes by W. H. Auden

10 Needs quotes by W. H. Auden

W. H. Auden distills the notion of needs into ten compact verses that carry his characteristic lyrical weight. This concise collection works as a quick literary window into his contemplations.

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Soft as the earth is mankind and both need to be altered.

W. H. Auden

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It's usually the stupid people that develop long illnesses. You need more than indolence and selfishness, you need endurance to make a…

W. H. Auden

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Machines are beneficial to the degree that they eliminate the need for labor, harmful to the degree that they eliminate the need…

W. H. Auden

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But he would have us most of all remember to be enthusiastic over the night. Not only for the sense of wonder…

W. H. Auden

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The actors today really need the whip hand. They're so lazy. They haven't got the sense of pride in their profession that…

W. H. Auden

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Machines have no political opinions, but they have profound political effects. They demand a strict regimentation of time, and, by abolishing the…

W. H. Auden

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In order that people may be happy in their work, these three things are needed: They must be fit for it: they…

W. H. Auden

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If the most significant characteristic of man is the complex of biological needs he shares with all members of his species, then…

W. H. Auden

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Christ did not enchant men; He demanded that they believe in Him: except on one occasion, the Transfiguration. For a brief while,…

W. H. Auden

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You need not see what someone is doing to know if it is his vocation, you have only to watch his eyes:…

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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The windiest militant trash Important Persons shout Is not so crude as our wish: What mad Nijinsky wrote About Diaghilev Is true of the…

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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To hunt for symbols in a fairy tale is absolutely fatal.

W. H. Auden

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