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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.
W. H. Auden -
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.
W. H. Auden
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One cannot walk through an assembly factory and not feel that one is in Hell.
W. H. Auden -
'Healing,' Papa would tell me, 'is not a science, but the intuitive art of wooing nature.'
W. H. Auden -
Machines are beneficial to the degree that they eliminate the need for labor, harmful to the degree that they eliminate the need for skill.
W. H. Auden -
Young people, who are still uncertain of their identity, often try on a succession of masks in the hope of finding the one which suits them - the one, in fact, which is not a mask.
W. H. Auden -
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.
W. H. Auden -
When one looks into the window of a store which sells devotional art objects, one can't help wishing the iconoclasts had won.
W. H. Auden
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A god who is both self-sufficient and content to remain so could not interest us enough to raise the question of his existence.
W. H. Auden -
Now is the age of anxiety.
W. H. Auden -
The critical opinions of a writer should always be taken with a large grain of salt. For the most part, they are manifestations of his debate with himself as to what he should do next and what he should avoid.
W. H. Auden -
A tremendous number of people in America work very hard at something that bores them. Even a rich man thinks he has to go down to the office everyday. Not because he likes it but because he can't think of anything else to do.
W. H. Auden -
You know there are no secrets in America. It's quite different in England, where people think of a secret as a shared relation between two people.
W. H. Auden -
A professor is someone who talks in someone else's sleep.
W. H. Auden
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The stars are not wanted now; put out every one, Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun, Pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods; For nothing now can ever come to any good.
W. H. Auden -
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.
W. H. Auden -
No human being is innocent, but there is a class of innocent human actions called Games.
W. H. Auden -
About suffering they were never wrong, The Old Masters.
W. H. Auden -
The basic stimulus to the intelligence is doubt, a feeling that the meaning of an experience is not self-evident.
W. H. Auden -
Geniuses are the luckiest of mortals because what they must do is the same as what they most want to do.
W. H. Auden
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To save your world you asked this man to die; would this man, could he see you now, ask why?
W. H. Auden -
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone. Silence the pianos and with muffled drum Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
W. H. Auden -
No poet or novelist wishes he were the only one who ever lived, but most of them wish they were the only one alive, and quite a number fondly believe their wish has been granted.
W. H. Auden -
Some writers confuse authenticity, which they ought always to aim at, with originality, which they should never bother about.
W. H. Auden