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Some writers confuse authenticity, which they ought always to aim at, with originality, which they should never bother about.
W. H. Auden
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W. H. Auden
Age: 66 †
Born: 1907
Born: February 21
Died: 1973
Died: September 28
Author
Composer
Essayist
Librettist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
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University Teacher
Writer
Jórvík
Wystan Hugh Auden
Wystan Auden
Wystan H Auden
W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
Bother
Aim
Writers
Ought
Confuse
Always
Authenticity
Never
Confusing
Originality
Confusion
More quotes by W. H. Auden
Look if you like, but you will have to leap.
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Blessed be all metrical rules that forbid automatic responses, force us to have second thoughts, free us from the fetters of Self.
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The theater has never been any good since the actors became gentlemen.
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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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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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It's a pity I am so impatient and careless, as any ordinary person could learn all the techniques of photography in a week. It is the democratic art, i.e. technical skill is practically eliminated - the more foolproof cameras become with focusing and exposure gadgets the better - and artistic quality depends only on choice of subject.
W. H. Auden
A vice in common can be the ground of a friendship but not a virtue in common. X and Y may be friends because they are both drunkards or womanizers but, if they are both sober and chaste, they are friends for some other reason.
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There must always be two kinds of art: escape-art, for man needs escape as he needs food and deep sleep, and parable-art, that art which shall teach man to unlearn hatred and learn love.
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My face looks like a wedding-cake left out in the rain.
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A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us.
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In times of joy, all of us wished we possessed a tail we could wag.
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The primary function of poetry, as of all the arts, is to make us more aware of ourselves and the world around us. I do not know if such increased awareness makes us more moral or more efficient. I hope not. I think it makes us more human, and I am quite certain it makes us more difficult to deceive.
W. H. Auden
There's always another story. There's more than meets the eye.
W. H. Auden
Civilizations should be measured by the degree of diversity attained and the degree of unity retained.
W. H. Auden
We all have these places where shy humiliations gambol on sunny afternoons.
W. H. Auden
To save your world you asked this man to die would this man, could he see you now, ask why?
W. H. Auden
As a rule, it was the pleasure-haters who became unjust.
W. H. Auden
Murder is unique in that it abolishes the party it injures, so that society has to take the place of the victim and on his behalf demand atonement or grant forgiveness it is the one crime in which society has a direct interest.
W. H. Auden
A tremendous number of people in America work very hard at something that bores them. Even a rich man thinks he has to go down to the office everyday. Not because he likes it but because he can't think of anything else to do.
W. H. Auden
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.
W. H. Auden
