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A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us.

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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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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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.
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About suffering they were never wrong, The Old Masters How well they understood Its human position how it takes place While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along.
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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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Oh, how I wish that Orwell were still alive, so that I could read his comments on contemporary events!
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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.
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Drama began as the act of a whole community. Ideally, there would be no speculators. In practice, every member of the audience should feel like an understudy.
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It's impossible to represent a saint [in Art]. It becomes boring. Perhaps because he is, like the Saturday Evening Post people, inthe position of having almost infinitely free will.
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All wishes, whatever their apparent content, have the same and unvarying meaning: I refuse to be what I am.
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Aside from purely technical analysis, nothing can be said about music, except when it is bad when it is good, one can only listen and be grateful.
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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.
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Some books are undeservedly forgotten none are undeservedly remembered.
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History is, strictly speaking, the study of questions the study of answers belongs to anthropology and sociology.
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I see little hope for a peaceful world until men are excluded from the realm of foreign policy altogether and all decisions concerning international relations are reserved for women, preferably married ones.
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Soft as the earth is mankind and both need to be altered.
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As a rule, it was the pleasure-haters who became unjust.
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A poet is a professional maker of verbal objects.
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Political history is far too criminal to be a fit subject of study for the young. Children should acquire their heroes and villians from fiction.
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Goodness is easier to recognize than to define.
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A verbal art like poetry is reflective it stops to think. Music is immediate, it goes on to become.
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The camera may do justice to laughter, but must degrade sorrow.
W. H. Auden