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A writer is a maker, not a man of action: his private life is of no concern to anybody but himself, his family and his friends.
W. H. Auden -
Desire, even in its wildest tantrums, can neither persuade me it is love nor stop me from wishing it were.
W. H. Auden
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I used to try and concentrate the poem so much that there wasn't a word that wasn't essential. This leads to becoming boring and constipated.
W. H. Auden -
You need not see what someone is doing to know if it is his vocation, you have only to watch his eyes: a cook mixing a sauce, a surgeon making a primary incision, a clerk completing a bill of lading wear the same rapt expression, forgetting themselves in a function. How beautiful it is, that eye-on-the-obje ct look.
W. H. Auden -
We do not change as we grow up. The difference between the child and the adult is that the former doesn't know who he is and the latter does.
W. H. Auden -
But if a stranger in the train asks me my occupation, I never answer "writer" for fear that he may go on to ask me what I write, and to answer "poetry" would embarrass us both, for we both know that nobody can earn a living simply by writing poetry.
W. H. Auden -
If the most significant characteristic of man is the complex of biological needs he shares with all members of his species, then the best lives for the writer to observe are those in which the role of natural necessity is clearest, namely, the lives of the very poor.
W. H. Auden -
In a game, just losing is almost as satisfying as just winning... In life the loser's score is always zero.
W. H. Auden
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The condition of mankind is, and always has been, so miserable and depraved that, if anyone were to say to the poet: "For God's sake stop singing and do something useful like putting on the kettle or fetching bandages," what just reason could he give for refusing?
W. H. Auden -
A poet feels the impulse to create a work of art when the passive awe provoked by an event is transformed into a desire to express that awe in a rite of worship.
W. H. Auden -
Our sufferings and weaknesses, in so far as they are personal, are of no literary interest whatsoever. They are only interesting in so far as we can see them as typical of the human condition.
W. H. Auden -
All good art is in the nature of a letter written to amuse a sick friend. Too much art, particularly in our time, is only a letter written to oneself.
W. H. Auden -
There's only one good test of pornography. Get twelve normal men to read the book, and then ask them, ''Did you get an erection?'' If the answer is ''Yes'' from a majority of the twelve, then the book is pornographic.
W. H. Auden -
In a land which is fully settled, most men must accept their local environment or try to change it by political means; only the exceptionally gifted or adventurous can leave to seek his fortune elsewhere. In America, on the other hand, to move on and make a fresh start somewhere else is still the normal reaction to dissatisfaction and failure.
W. H. Auden
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In addition to English, at least one ancient language, probably Greek or Hebrew, and two modern languages would be required.
W. H. Auden -
The actors today really need the whip hand. They're so lazy. They haven't got the sense of pride in their profession that the less socially elevated musical comedy and music hall people or acrobats have. The theater has never been any good since the actors became gentlemen.
W. H. Auden -
Literary confessors are contemptible, like beggars who exhibit their sores for money, but not so contemptible as the public that buys their books.
W. H. Auden -
Encased in talent like a uniform, The rank of every poet is well known; They can amaze us like a thunderstorm, Or die so young, or live for years alone.
W. H. Auden -
How happy 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.
W. H. Auden -
Say this city has ten million souls, Some are living in mansions, some are living in holes: Yet there’s no place for us, my dear, yet there’s no place for us.
W. H. Auden
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And make us as Newton was, who in his garden watching The apple falling towards England, became aware Between himself and her of an eternal tie.
W. H. Auden -
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.
W. H. Auden -
Human beings are, necessarily, actors who...can be divided...into the sane who know they are acting and the mad who do not.
W. H. Auden -
It's usually the stupid people that develop long illnesses. You need more than indolence and selfishness, you need endurance to make a good patient.
W. H. Auden