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Librettist Inspirational Quotes (7320)

Page 23 of 305
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Most people call something profound, not because it is near some important truth but because it is distant from ordinary life. Thus, darkness is profound to the eye, silence to the ear what-is-not is the profundity of what-is.
W. H. Auden
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History is, strictly speaking, the study of questions the study of answers belongs to anthropology and sociology.
W. H. Auden
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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.
W. H. Auden
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In times of joy, all of us wished we possessed a tail we could wag.
W. H. Auden
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Yet no one hears his own remarks as prose.
W. H. Auden
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No good opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible.
W. H. Auden
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All sins tend to be addictive, and the terminal point of addiction is damnation.
W. H. Auden
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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
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If equal affection cannot be, let the more loving be me.
W. H. Auden
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Out on the lawn I lie in bed, Vega conspicuous overhead.
W. H. Auden
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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
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Genealogies are admirable things, provided they do not encourage the curious delusion that some families are older than others.
W. H. Auden
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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.
W. H. Auden
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Without communication with the dead, a fully human life is not possible.
W. H. Auden
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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
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I think the first prerequisite to civilization is an ability to make polite conversation.
W. H. Auden
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Evil is unspectacular and always human, and shares our bed and eats at our own table.
W. H. Auden
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A man is a form of life that dreams in order to act and acts in order to dream.
W. H. Auden
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Intellectual disgrace Stares from every human face, And the seas of pity lie Locked and frozen in each eye.
W. H. Auden
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My poetry doesn't change from place to place - it changes with the years. It's very important to be one's age. You get ideas you have to turn down - 'I'm sorry, no longer' 'I'm sorry, not yet.
W. H. Auden
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Let us honor if we can the vertical man, though we value none but the horizontal one
W. H. Auden
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Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can: all of them make me laugh.
W. H. Auden
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There is a certain kind of person who is so dominated by the desire to be loved for himself alone that he has constantly to test those around him by tiresome behavior what he says and does must be admired, not because it is intrinsically admirable, but because it is his remark, his act. Does not this explain a good deal of avant-garde art?
W. H. Auden
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Behind you swiftly the figure comes softly, The spot on your skin is a shocking disease.
W. H. Auden
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