A fairy tale...on the other hand, demands of the reader total surrender; so long as he is in its world, there must be for him no other.

W.H. Auden


Go to quote


For who can bear to feel himself forgotten?

W.H. Auden

Tags: w-h-auden



Go to quote


Between the ages of twenty and forty we are engaged in the process of discovering who we are, which involves learning the differences between accidental limitations which it is our duty to outgrow and the necessary limitations of our nature beyond which we cannot trespass with impunity.

W.H. Auden


Go to quote


(Precocious children rarely grow up good). My aunts and uncles thought me quite atrocious. For using words more adult than I should

W.H. Auden


Go to quote


I have never, I think, wanted to 'belong' to a group whose interests were not mine, nor have I resented exclusion. Why should thet accept me? All I have ever asked is that others should go their way and let me go mine.

W.H. Auden

Tags: thought-provoking



Go to quote


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.

W.H. Auden

Tags: writing inspiration drama narrative structure



Go to quote


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.

W.H. Auden

Tags: obscurity poems sharing



Go to quote


What mad Nijinsky wrote/ About Diaghilev/ Is true of the normal heart;/ For the error bred in the bone/ Of each woman and each man/ Craves what it cannot have, Not universal love/ But to be loved alone.

W.H. Auden

Tags: love



Go to quote


That to the adolescent is the authentic poetic note and whoever is the first in his life to strike it, whether Tennyson, Keats, Swinburne, Housman or another, awakens a passion of imitation and an affectation which no subsequent refinement or sophistication of his taste can entirely destroy. In my own case it was Hardy in the summer of 1923; for more than a year I read no one else and I do not think that I was ever without one volume or another or the beautifully produced Wessex edition in my hands: I smuggled them into class, carried them about on Sunday walks, and took them up to the dormitory to read in the early morning, though they were far too unwieldy to be read in bed with comfort. In the autumn of 1924 there was a palace revolution after which he had to share his kingdom with Edward Thomas, until finally they were both defeated by Elliot at the battle of Oxford in 1926.

W.H. Auden

Tags: poetry



Go to quote


But all the clocks in the city
Began to whirr and chime:
'O let not Time deceive you,
You cannot conquer Time

W.H. Auden

Tags: poetry



Go to quote


« first previous
Page 22 of 23.
next last »

©gutesprueche.com

Data privacy

Imprint
Contact
Wir benutzen Cookies

Diese Website verwendet Cookies, um Ihnen die bestmögliche Funktionalität bieten zu können.

OK Ich lehne Cookies ab