W. H. Auden Quotes
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Ideally, government is the means by which all the individual wills are assured complete freedom of moral choice and at the same time prevented from ever clashing.
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The parlour cars and Pullmans are packed also with scented assassins, salad-eaters who murder on milk.
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Put the car away; when life fails What's the good of going to Wales? Here am I, here are you: But what does it mean? What are we going to do?
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To have a sense of sin means to feel guilty at there being an ethical choice to make, a guilt which, however 'good' I may become, remains unchanged.
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The poet who writes 'free' verse is like Robinson Crusoe on his desert island: he must do all his cooking, laundry and darning for himself. In a few exceptional cases, this manly independence produces something original and impressive, but more often the result is squalor - dirty sheets on the unmade bed and empty bottles on the unswept floor.
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I said earlier that I do not believe an artist's life throws much light upon his works. I do believe, however, that, more often than most people realize, his works may throw light upon his life. An artist with certain imaginative ideas in his head may then involve himself in relationships which are congenial to them.
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I am beginning to lose patience With my personal relations. They are not deep And they are not cheap.
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The class distinctions proper to a democratic society are not those of rank or money, still less, as is apt to happen when these are abandoned, of race, but of age.
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One cannot review a bad book without showing off.
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'Healing,' Papa would tell me, 'is not a science, but the intuitive art of wooing nature.'
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It takes little talent to see what lies under one's nose, a good deal to know in what direction to point that organ.
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When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter, And when he cried the little children died in the streets.
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When one looks into the window of a store which sells devotional art objects, one can't help wishing the iconoclasts had won.
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You owe it to all of us all get on with what you're good at.
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Some writers confuse authenticity, which they ought always to aim at, with originality, which they should never bother about.
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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.
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A crowd of ordinary decent folk Watched from without and neither moved nor spoke As three pale figures were led forth and bound To three posts driven upright in the ground.
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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.
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It's frightfully important for a writer to be his age, not to be younger or older than he is. One might ask, 'What should I write at the age of sixty-four,' but never, 'What should I write in 1940.'
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A poet, qua poet, has only one political duty, namely, in his own writing to set an example of the correct use of his mother tongue, which is always being corrupted. When words lose their meaning, physical force takes over.
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A craftsman knows in advance what the finished result will be, while the artist knows only what it will be when he has finished it. But it is unbecoming in an artist to talk about inspiration; that is the reader's business.
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In all technologically 'advanced' countries, fashion has replaced tradition, so that involuntary membership in a society can no longer provide a feeling of community.
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We would rather be ruined than changed We would rather die in our dread Than climb the cross of the moment And let our illusions die.
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If time were the wicked sheriff in a horse opera, I'd pay for riding lessons and take his gun away.