Quotes By Author: W.H. Auden
“Let not Time deceive you, You cannot conquer Time.”
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“In the prison of his daysTeach the free man how to praise”
“Some thirty inches from my noseThe frontier of my Person goes,And all the untilled air betweenIs private pagus or demesne.Stranger, unless with bedroom eyesI beckon you to fraternize,Beware of rudely crossing it:I have no gun, but I can spit.”
“When words lose their meaning, physical force takes over.from an essay for Writers by Nancy Crampton”
“Defenceless under the nightOur world in stupor lies;Yet, dotted everywhere,Ironic points of lightFlash out wherever the JustExchange their messages:May I, composed like themOf Eros and of dust,Beleaguered by the sameNegation and despair,Show an affirming flame.”
“Say this city has ten million souls,Some are living in mansions, some are living in holes:Yet there’s no place for us, my dear, yet there’s no place for us.”
“Poetry makes nothing happen.”
“And each in the cell of himself is almost convinced of his freedom.”
“Drama is based on the Mistake. I think someone is my friend when he really is my enemy, that I am free to marry a woman when in fact she is my mother, that this person is a chambermaid when it is a young nobleman in disguise, that this well-dressed young man is rich when he is really a penniless adventurer, or that if I do this such and such a result will follow when in fact it results in something very different. All good drama has two movements, first the making of the mistake, then the discovery that it was a mistake.”
“I will love you forever” swears the poet. I find this easy to swear too. “I will love you at 4:15 pm next Tuesday” – Is that still as easy?”
“I smell blood and an era of prominent madmen.”
“Language is the mother, not the handmaiden, of thought; words will tell you things you never thought or felt before.”
“If equal affection cannot be,Let the more loving one be me.”
“We must love one another or die”