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The ear tends to be lazy, craves the familiar and is shocked by the unexpected; the eye, on the other hand, tends to be impatient, craves the novel and is bored by repetition.

Senses, Familiarity, Novelty, Perception, Human Nature

The ear tends to be lazy craves the familiar and

The ear tends to be lazy craves the familiar and

The ear tends to be lazy craves the familiar and

W.H. Auden’s Quotes On Topics

Observation | Privacy | National Pride | Environmental Destruction | Introversion | Women | Envy | Intellectual Criticism | Literary Taste | Direction | Hope | Mysticism | Domestic Imagery | Academia | Ineffability | Community | Irritations | Accountability | Education | Body | More

More W.H. Auden Quotes

“A poet's hope: to be, like some valley cheese, local, but prized elsewhere.”

Poetry, Aspiration, Local, Universal Appeal, Metaphor

“Every man carries with him through life a mirror, as unique and impossible to get rid of as his shadow.”

Identity, Self-reflection, Individuality, Metaphor, Human Nature

“My deepest feeling about politicians is that they are dangerous lunatics to be avoided when possible and carefully humored; people, above all, to whom one must never tell the truth.”

Politics, Distrust, Caution, Honesty, Cynicism

“Poetry is the only art people haven't learned to consume like soup.”

Poetry, Art Consumption, Uniqueness, Cultural Criticism, Literary Appreciation

“All sins tend to be addictive, and the terminal point of addiction is damnation.”

Sin, Addiction, Damnation, Human Nature, Moral Decay

“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.”

Despair, Isolation, Mortality, Defeat, Historical Perspective

“Like everything which is not the involuntary result of fleeting emotion but the creation of time and will, any marriage, happy or unhappy, is infinitely more interesting than any romance, however passionate.”

Marriage, Romance, Commitment, Time, Emotional Complexity

“Even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot Where the dogs go on with their doggy life.”

Martyrdom, Mundanity, Suffering, Contrast, Everyday Life

“A verbal art like poetry is reflective; it stops to think. Music is immediate, it goes on to become.”

Poetry, Music, Reflection, Immediacy, Artistic Comparison

“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.”

Mathematics, Judgment, Professionalism, Comparison, Societal Expectations

“Healing is not a science, but the intuitive art of wooing nature.”

Healing, Intuition, Nature, Art, Science

“An unmanly sort of man whose love life seems to have been largely confined to crying in laps and playing mouse.”

Masculinity, Love, Criticism, Weakness, Character Assessment

“What is a Professor of Poetry? How can poetry be professed?”

Poetry, Academia, Skepticism, Artistic Expression, Teaching

“A man has his distinctive personal scent which his wife, his children and his dog can recognize. A crowd has a generalized stink. The public is odorless.”

Individuality, Crowds, Perception, Human Senses, Social Commentary

“Poetry makes nothing happen.”

Poetry, Impact, Futility, Art Criticism, Cultural Commentary

“The lights must never go out, The music must always play.”

Continuity, Entertainment, Distraction, Societal Expectations, Metaphor

“Drama is based on the mistake.”

Drama, Error, Conflict, Storytelling, Human Nature

“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.”

Diversity, Individuality, Spirituality, Equality, Human Experience

“I sit in one of the dives On Fifty-second Street Uncertain and afraid As the clever hopes expire Of a low dishonest decade.”

Uncertainty, Fear, Disillusionment, Urban Life, Historical Reflection

“Choice of attention — to pay attention to this and ignore that — is to the inner life what choice of action is to the outer.”

Attention, Choice, Inner Life, Action, Consciousness