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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
Playwright
Poet
Screenwriter
University Teacher
Writer
Jórvík
Wystan Hugh Auden
Wystan Auden
Wystan H Auden
W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
Aim
Writers
Ought
Confuse
Always
Authenticity
Never
Confusing
Originality
Confusion
Bother
More quotes by W. H. Auden
By mourning tongues The death of the poet was kept from his poems.
W. H. Auden
We are lived by powers we pretend to understand.
W. H. Auden
An honest self-portrait is extremely rare because a man who has reached the degree of self-consciousness presupposed by the desire to paint his own portrait has almost always also developed an ego-consciousness which paints himself painting himself, and introduces artificial highlights and dramatic shadows.
W. H. Auden
Dance till the stars come down from the rafters Dance, Dance, Dance 'till you drop.
W. H. Auden
Be subtle, various, ornamental, clever, And do not listen to those critics ever Whose crude provincial gullets crave in books Plain cooking made still plainer by plain cooks.
W. H. Auden
Politics cannot be a science, because in politics theory and practice cannot be separated, and the sciences depend upon their separation.
W. H. Auden
I don't think the mystical experience can be verbalized. When the ego disappears, so does power over language.
W. H. Auden
My deepest feeling about politicians is that they are dangerous lunatics to be avoided when possible and carefully humored people, above all, to whom one must never tell the truth.
W. H. Auden
The center that I cannot find is known to my unconscious mind.
W. H. Auden
Cathedrals, luxury liners laden with souls, Holding to the east their hulls of stone.
W. H. Auden
The closest modern equivalent to the Homeric hero is the ace fighter pilot.
W. H. Auden
There are three cardinal rules - don't take somebody else's boyfriend unless you've been specifically invited to do so, don't take a drink without being asked, and keep a scrupulous accounting in financial matters.
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Though one cannot always Remember exactly why one has been happy, There is no forgetting that one was.
W. H. Auden
To choose what is difficult all one's days, as if it were easy, that is faith
W. H. Auden
O plunge your hands in water, Plunge them in up to the wrist Stare, stare in the basin And wonder what you've missed.
W. H. Auden
As a rule, it was the pleasure-haters who became unjust.
W. H. Auden
You know there are no secrets in America. It's quite different in England, where people think of a secret as a shared relation between two people.
W. H. Auden
Music is the best means we have of digesting time.
W. H. Auden
August for the people and their favourite islands. Daily the steamers sidle up to meet The effusive welcome of the pier.
W. H. Auden
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.
W. H. Auden
