The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations Preface

‘Hymn to St Cecilia’ op. 27 (1942)
Blessed Cecilia, appear in visions
To all musicians, appear and inspire:
Translated Daughter, come down and startle
Composing mortals with immortal fire.
‘Three Songs for St Cecilia’s Day’ (1941)
Let us honour if we can
The vertical man
Though we value none
But the horizontal one.
‘To Christopher Isherwood’ (1930)
Our researchers into Public Opinion are content
That he held the proper opinions for the time of year;
When there was peace, he was for peace; when there was war, he went.
‘The Unknown Citizen’ (1940)
Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:
Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.
‘The Unknown Citizen’ (1940)
The sky is darkening like a stain;
Something is going to fall like rain,
And it won’t be flowers.
‘The Witnesses’ (1935) l. 67
All sin tends to be addictive, and the terminal point of addiction is what is called damnation.
‘A Certain World’ (1970) ‘Hell’
Man is a history-making creature who can neither repeat his past nor leave it behind.
‘The Dyer’s Hand’ (1963) ‘D. H. Lawrence’
The true men of action in our time, those who transform the world, are not the politicians and
statesmen, but the scientists. Unfortunately poetry cannot celebrate them, because their deeds are
concerned with things, not persons, and are, therefore, speechless. When I find myself in the
company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a drawing room
full of dukes.
‘The Dyer’s Hand’ (1963) ‘The Poet and the City’
Some books are undeservedly forgotten; none are undeservedly remembered.
‘The Dyer’s Hand’ (1963) ‘Reading’
My face looks like a wedding-cake left out in the rain.
In Humphrey Carpenter ‘W. H. Auden’ (1981) pt. 2, ch. 6
Art is born of humiliation.
In Stephen Spender ‘World Within World’ (1951) ch. 2
1.115 W. H. Auden 1907-73 and Christopher Isherwood 1904-86