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A poet is a professional maker of verbal objects.
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
Verbal
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Objects
More quotes by 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
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.
W. H. Auden
In a world of prayer, we are all equal in the sense that each of us is a unique person, with a unique perspective on the world, a member of a class of one.
W. H. Auden
Some writers confuse authenticity, which they ought always to aim at, with originality, which they should never bother about.
W. H. Auden
There has been a vast output of critical studies in contemporary poetry, some of them first rate, but I do not think that , as a rule, a poet should read them.
W. H. Auden
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.
W. H. Auden
What we have not named as a symbol escapes our notice.
W. H. Auden
In the end, art is small beer. The really serious things are earning one's living so as not to be a parasite and loving one's neighbor.
W. H. Auden
The friends who met here and embraced are gone, Each to his own mistake.
W. H. Auden
Men will pay large sums to whores for telling them they are not bores.
W. H. Auden
To be free is often to be lonely.
W. H. Auden
I used to try and concentrate the poem so much that there wasn't a word that wasn't essential. This leads to becoming boring and constipated.
W. H. Auden
To me Art's subject is the human clay, / And landscape but a background to a torso / All Cezanne's apples I would give away / For one small Goya or a Daumier.
W. H. Auden
Poetry might be defined as the clear expression of mixed feelings.
W. H. Auden
Words are for those with promises to keep.
W. H. Auden
Poetry is the only art people haven't learned to consume like soup.
W. H. Auden
Over the tea-cups and in the square the tongue has its desire Still waters run deep, my dear, there's never smoke without fire.
W. H. Auden
As biological organisms made of matter, we are subject to the laws of physics and biology: as conscious persons who create our own history we are free to decide what that history shall be. Without science, we should have no notion of equality without art, no notion of liberty.
W. H. Auden
Words have no word for words that are not true.
W. H. Auden
We were put on this Earth to help others. Why others were put here is beyond me.
W. H. Auden
