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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.

W. H. Auden

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W. H. Auden
Age: 66 †
Born: 1907
Born: February 21
Died: 1973
Died: September 28
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Literary Critic
Literary Historian
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Jórvík
Wystan Hugh Auden
Wystan Auden
Wystan H Auden
W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
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More quotes by W. H. Auden

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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.
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Art is born of humiliation.
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Acts of injustice done Between the setting and the rising sun In history lie like bones, each one.
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America has always been a country of amateurs where the professional, that is to say, the man who claims authority as a member of an élite which knows the law in some field or other, is an object of distrust and resentment.
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O let not Time deceive you, You cannot conquer Time.
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A man is a form of life that dreams in order to act and acts in order to dream.
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August for the people and their favourite islands. Daily the steamers sidle up to meet The effusive welcome of the pier.
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He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.
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Organic growth is a cyclical process it is just as true to say that the oak is a potential acorn as it is to say the acorn is a potential oak. But the process of writing a poem, of making any art object, is not cyclical but a motion in one direction toward a definite end.
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We are all here on earth to help others.
W. H. Auden
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Beloved, we are always in the wrong, Handling so clumsily our stupid lives, Suffering too little or too long, Too careful even in our selfish loves: The decorative manias we obey Die in grimaces round us every day, Yet through their tohu-bohu comes a voice Which utters an absurd command - Rejoice.
W. H. Auden
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No person can be a great leader unless he takes genuine joy in the successes of those under him.
W. H. Auden
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There is no love There are only the various envies, all of them sad.
W. H. Auden
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No being can make another one happy.
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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a culture is no better than its woods
W. H. Auden
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See without looking, hear without listening, breathe without asking.
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.
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A poem is a verbal artifact which must be as skillfully and solidly constructed as a table or a motorcycle.
W. H. Auden
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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.
W. H. Auden