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A verbal art like poetry is reflective it stops to think. Music is immediate, it goes on to become.
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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Writer
Jórvík
Wystan Hugh Auden
Wystan Auden
Wystan H Auden
W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
Art
Become
Music
Reflective
Think
Verbal
Thinking
Stops
Like
Immediate
Poetry
Goes
More quotes by W. H. Auden
The friends who met here and embraced are gone, Each to his own mistake.
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A false enchantment can all too easily last a lifetime.
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The trees encountered on a country stroll Reveal a lot about that country's soul ... A culture is no better than its woods.
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'Healing,' Papa would tell me, 'is not a science, but the intuitive art of wooing nature.'
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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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A poet must never make a statement simply because it is sounds poetically exciting he must also believe it to be true.
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.
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Every high C accurately struck demolishes the theory that we are the irresponsible puppets of fate or chance.
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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.
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Does God judge us by appearances? I Suspect that He does.
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Literary confessors are contemptible, like beggars who exhibit their sores for money, but not so contemptible as the public that buys their books.
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There are bills to be paid, machines to keep in repair, Irregular verbs to learn, the Time Being to redeem From insignificance.
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There are good books which are only for adults. There are no good books which are only for children.
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God may reduce you on Judgment Day to tears of shame, reciting by heart the poems you would have written, had your life been good.
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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
Poetry is the only art people haven't learned to consume like soup.
W. H. Auden
We all have these places where shy humiliations gambol on sunny afternoons.
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It's frightfully important for a writer to be his age, not to be younger or older than he is. One might ask, What should I write at the age of sixty-four, but never, What should I write in 1940.
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Every American poet feels that the whole responsibility for contemporary poetry has fallen upon his shoulders, that he is a literary aristocracy of one.
W. H. Auden
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
