“Art is our chief means of breaking bread with the dead.”
Art
“Now is the age of anxiety.”
AgeAll Quotes by W. H. Auden
“A verbal art like poetry is reflective it stops to think. Music is immediate, it goes on to become.”
Art“Almost all of our relationships begin and most of them continue as forms of mutual exploitation, a mental or physical barter, to be terminated when one or both parties run out of goods.”
Relationship“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.”
Experience“Health is the state about which medicine has nothing to say.”
Health“Music is the best means we have of digesting time.”
Best“Art is born of humiliation.”
Art“'Healing,' Papa would tell me, 'is not a science, but the intuitive art of wooing nature.'”
Art“May it not be that, just as we have to have faith in Him, God has to have faith in us and, considering the history of the human race so far, may it not be that 'faith' is even more difficult for Him than it is for us?”
Faith“Choice of attention - to pay attention to this and ignore that - is to the inner life what choice of action is to the outer. In both cases, a man is responsible for his choice and must accept the consequences, whatever they may be.”
Life“I'll love you, dear, I'll love you till China and Africa meet and the river jumps over the mountain and the salmon sing in the street.”
Love“A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.”
Love“What the mass media offers is not popular art, but entertainment which is intended to be consumed like food, forgotten, and replaced by a new dish.”
Art“Death is the sound of distant thunder at a picnic.”
Death“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.”
Love“Murder is unique in that it abolishes the party it injures, so that society has to take the place of the victim and on his behalf demand atonement or grant forgiveness it is the one crime in which society has a direct interest.”
Forgiveness“It is a sad fact about our culture that a poet can earn much more money writing or talking about his art than he can by practicing it.”
Art“Of all possible subjects, travel is the most difficult for an artist, as it is the easiest for a journalist.”
Travel“Music can be made anywhere, is invisible and does not smell.”
Music“Learn from your dreams what you lack.”
Dreams