Most poetry is the utterance of a man in some state of passion, love, joy, grief, rage, etc., and no doubt this… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language. — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
There has been a vast output of critical studies in contemporary poetry, some of them first rate, but I do not think… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
What the poet says has never been said before, but, once he has said it, his readers recognize its validity for themselves. — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
A poet, qua poet, has only one political duty, namely, in his own writing to set an example of the correct use… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
All poets adore explosions, thunderstorms, tornadoes, conflagrations, ruins, scenes of spectacular carnage. The poetic imagination is therefore not at all a desirable… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
All poets adore explosions, thunderstorms, tornadoes, conflagrations, ruins, scenes of spectacular carnage. The poetic imagination is not at all a desirable quality… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
No poet or novelist wishes he were the only one who ever lived, but most of them wish they were the only… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
To my generation no other English poet seemed so perfectly to express the sensibility of a male adolescent. If I do not… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
Encased in talent like a uniform, The rank of every poet is well known; They can amaze us like a thunderstorm, Or… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
The poet who writes "free" verse is like Robinson Crusoe on his desert island: he must do all his cooking, laundry and… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
The chances are that, in the course of his lifetime, the major poet will write more bad poems than the minor, simply… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
“Every poet has his dream reader: mine keeps a look out for curious prosodic fauna like bacchics and choriambs.” — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
The poet marries the language, and out of this marriage the poem is born. — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
As a poet, there is only one political duty, and that is to defend one's language from corruption. — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
The ideal audience the poet imagines consists of the beautiful who go to bed with him, the powerful who invite him to… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
One demands two things of a poem. Firstly, it must be a well-made verbal object that does honor to the language in… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
It is a sad fact about our culture that a poet can earn much more money writing or talking about his art… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
The condition of mankind is, and always has been, so miserable and depraved that, if anyone were to say to the poet:… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
Every American poet feels that the whole responsibility for contemporary poetry has fallen upon his shoulders, that he is a literary aristocracy… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
A poet can write about a man slaying a dragon, but not about a man pushing a button that releases a bomb. — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
A poet feels the impulse to create a work of art when the passive awe provoked by an event is transformed into… — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
Pleasure is by no means an infallible critical guide, but it is the least fallible. — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
The commonest ivory tower is that of the average man, the state of passivity towards experience. — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
Harrow the house of the dead; look shining at New styles of architecture, a change of heart. — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
Men will pay large sums to whores for telling them they are not bores. — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
I and the public know What all schoolchildren learn, Those to whom evil is done Do evil in return. — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
One cannot walk through an assembly factory and not feel that one is in Hell. — W. H. Auden Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
