I. Frost's Selected Quotations

Everything at Amazon by and about: W H Auden

The train, panting up past lonely farms,
Fed by the fireman's restless arms . . .
Past cotton grass and moorland boulder,
Shoveling white steam over her shoulder.
W H Auden, Quoted by Melvin Maddocks 24 Mar 80

Among those whom I like, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can; all of them make me laugh.
W H Auden, The Dyer's Hand Random House 62

Health is the state about which medicine has nothing to say: Sanctity is the state about which theology has nothing to say.
W H Auden, Atlantic May 70

In a world of prayer, we are all equal in the sense that each of us is a unique person, with a unique perspective on the world, a member of a class of one.
W H Auden, Recalled on his death 28 Sep 73

Murder is commoner among cooks than among members of any other profession.
W H Auden, Forewords and Afterwords Random House 73

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, Newsweek 17 Mar 58

A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.
W H Auden, NY Times 9 Oct 60

It's 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.
W H Auden, The Dyer's Hand Random House 68

A poet is a professional maker of verbal objects.
W H Auden, Newsweek 29 Jan 68

Art is our chief means of breaking bread with the dead.
W H Auden, NY Times 7 Aug 71

A real book is not one that's read, but one that reads us.
W H Auden, Recalled on his death 28 Sep 73

No good opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible.
W H Auden, Time 29 Dec 61

[Music] can be made anywhere, it is invisible and does not smell.
W H Auden, From 1951 poem "In Praise of Limestone,"

What the mass media offer is not popular art, but entertainment which is intended to be consumed like food, forgotten and replaced by a new dish.
W H Auden, The Dyer?s Hand Random House 68

In the deserts of the heart
Let the healing fountains start,
In the prison of his days,
Teach the free man how to praise.
W H Auden,"In Memory of W B Yeats," lines inscribed on Auden's "stone in Poets Corner" of Westminster Abbey 2 Oct 74

Death is the sound of distant thunder at a picnic.
W H Auden, NY Times 31 Mar 85