Top 435 Quotes & Sayings by W. H. Auden - Page 8

Slavery is so intolerable a condition that the slave can hardly escape deluding himself into thinking that he is choosing to obey his master's commands when, in fact, he is obliged to. Most slaves of habit suffer from this delusion and so do some writers, enslaved by an all too personal style.

Now the leaves are falling fast, Nurse's flowers will not last; Nurses to their graves are gone, And the prams go rolling on.

We till shadowed days are done, We must weep and sing Duty's conscious wrong, The Devil in the clock

Between labor and play stands work. A man is a worker if he is personally interested in the job which society pays him to do; whatfrom the point of view of society is necessary labor is from his point of view voluntary play. Whether a job is to be classified as labor or work depends, not on the job itself, but on the tastes of the individual who undertakes it. The difference does not, for example, coincide with the difference between a manual and a mental job; a gardener or a cobbler may be a worker, a bank clerk a laborer.

How happy is the lot of the mathematician! He is judged solely by his peers, and the standard is so high that no colleague or rival can ever win a reputation he does not deserve. No cashier writes a letter to the press complaining about the incomprehensibility of Modern Mathematics and comparing it unfavorably with the good old days when mathematicians were content to paper irregularly shaped rooms and fill bathtubs without closing the waste pipe.

Doom is dark and deeper than any sea-dingle.

The relation of faith between subject and object is unique in every case. Hundreds may believe, but each has to believe by himself.

For time is inches And the heart's changes, Where ghost has haunted Lost and wanted.

To ask the hard question is simple.

To the man-in-the-street, who, I'm sorry to say, is a keen observer of life. The word Intellectual suggests straight away. A man who's untrue to his wife.

Defenceless under the night Our world in stupor lies; Yet, dotted everywhere, Ironic points of light Flash out wherever the Just Exchange their messages: May I, composed like them Of Eros and of dust, Beleaguered by the same Negation and despair, Show an affirming flame.

Literary confessors are contemptible, like beggars who exhibit their sores for money, but not so contemptible as the public that buys their books.

Those to whom evil is doneDo evil in return.

To me Art's subject is the human clay, / And landscape but a background to a torso; / All Cezanne's apples I would give away / For one small Goya or a Daumier.

Caesar's double-bed is warm As an unimportant clerk Writes i do not like my work On a pink official form.