Base words are uttered only by the base
And can for such at once be understood;
But noble platitudes — ah, there’s a case
Where the most careful scrutiny is needed
To tell a voice that’s genuinely good
From one that’s base but merely has succeeded.W. H. Auden (1907–1973) Anglo-American poet [Wystan Hugh Auden]
“Base Words Are Uttered Only by the Base,” ll. 1-5 (1940)
Quotations by:
Auden, W. H.
One can only blaspheme if one believes.
W. H. Auden (1907–1973) Anglo-American poet [Wystan Hugh Auden]
“Concerning the Unpredictable,” Forewords and Afterwords (1973)
(Source)
Evil is unspectacular and always human
And shares our bed and eats at our own table.
About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along.W. H. Auden (1907–1973) Anglo-American poet [Wystan Hugh Auden]
“Musée des Beaux Arts” (1940)
Full text.
Young people, who are still uncertain of their identity, often try on a succession of masks in the hope of finding the one which suits them — the one, in fact, which is not a mask.
W. H. Auden (1907–1973) Anglo-American poet [Wystan Hugh Auden]
“One of the Family” (1965), Forewords and Afterwords (1973)
(Source)
Those who will not reason
Perish in the act:
Those who will not act
Perish for that reason.W. H. Auden (1907–1973) Anglo-American poet [Wystan Hugh Auden]
“Shorts,” No. 7 (c. 1930), Collected Poems, Part 2 “1927-1932” (1976 ed.) [ed. Mendelson]
(Source)
The stars are dead. The animals will not look.
We are left alone with our day, and the time is short, and
History to the defeated
May say Alas but cannot help nor pardon.W. H. Auden (1907–1973) Anglo-American poet [Wystan Hugh Auden]
“Spain,” l. 101-104 (1937)
To-morrow for the young the poets exploding like bombs,
The walks by the lake, the weeks of perfect communion;
To-morrow the bicycle races
Through the suburbs on summer evenings. But to-day the struggle.W. H. Auden (1907–1973) Anglo-American poet [Wystan Hugh Auden]
“Spain,” ll. 81-92 (1937)
A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.
W. H. Auden (1907–1973) Anglo-American poet [Wystan Hugh Auden]
“Squares and Oblongs” (1948)
He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.W. H. Auden (1907–1973) Anglo-American poet [Wystan Hugh Auden]
“Stop All the Clocks [Funeral Blues],” st. 3 (1936)
(Source)
This stanza is not in the original version of the poem, for the verse play The Ascent of F6 (1936) (with Christopher Isherwood).
Instead, it appears in the revised cabaret song that Auden wrote in 1937-1938. It is this latter version, less tied to the play, that is commonly collected, and that gained popularity when recited in the film Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994).
Before people complain of the obscurity of modern poetry, they should first examine their consciences and ask themselves with how many people and on how many occasions they have genuinely and profoundly shared some experience with another; they might also ask themselves how much poetry of any period they can honestly say that they understand.
W. H. Auden (1907–1973) Anglo-American poet [Wystan Hugh Auden]
“The Dyer’s Hand” (1955)
Published in The Listener (30 Jun 1955)
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 (1907–1973) Anglo-American poet [Wystan Hugh Auden]
“The I Without a Self,” The Dyer’s Hand and Other Essays (1962)
Sometimes misattributed to Franz Kafka.
How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.W. H. Auden (1907–1973) Anglo-American poet [Wystan Hugh Auden]
“The More Loving One,” ll. 8-12 (1957)
Only animals who are below civilization and the angels who are beyond it can be sincere. Human beings are, necessarily, actors who cannot become something before they have first pretended to be it; and they can be divided, not into the hypocritical and the sincere, but into the sane who know they are acting and the mad who do not.
W. H. Auden (1907–1973) Anglo-American poet [Wystan Hugh Auden]
The Age of Anxiety: A Baroque Eclogue, Part 5 “The Masque” (1947)
(Source)
Jean Kerr, in her play (1973) Finishing Touches, Act 1, the character Jeff paraphrases the above:Remember what Auden says. Man is the only animal that learns by being hypocritical. He pretends to be polite and then, eventually, he becomes polite.
The idea of habit becoming character, or practicing one's way to (usually) virtue, can be found in numerous variations. See also Aristotle (c. 325 BC) (and again, and again), Plutarch (c. AD 90), Hawthorne (1850), Reade (c. 1860), Clarke (c. 1860), Roosevelt (1913), Lewis (1952), Hoffer (1955), Eco (1988).
We would rather be ruined than changed,
We would rather die in our dread
Than climb the cross of the moment
And let our illusions die.W. H. Auden (1907–1973) Anglo-American poet [Wystan Hugh Auden]
The Age of Anxiety, Part 6 [Malin] (1948)
(Source)
Acts of injustice done
Between the setting and the rising sun
In history lie like bones, each one.W. H. Auden (1907–1973) Anglo-American poet [Wystan Hugh Auden]
The Ascent of F6, Act II, sc. v [with Christpher Isherwood] (1936)
No human being can make another one happy.
W. H. Auden (1907–1973) Anglo-American poet [Wystan Hugh Auden]
The Dyer’s Hand and Other Essays, “Postscript: The Frivolous & the Earnest” (1962)
Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can: all of them make me laugh.
W. H. Auden (1907–1973) Anglo-American poet [Wystan Hugh Auden]
The Dyer’s Hand and Other Essays, Part 7 “The Shield of Perseus,” “Notes on the Comic” (1962)
(Source)
We are all here on earth to help others; what on earth the others are here for I don’t know.
W. H. Auden (1907–1973) Anglo-American poet [Wystan Hugh Auden]
The Dyer’s Hand, and Other Essays (1968)
The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.W. H. Auden (1907–1973) Anglo-American poet [Wystan Hugh Auden]
Twelve Songs, Number 9 (1936)