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All works of art are commissioned in the sense that no artist can create one by a simple act of will but must wait until what he believes to be a good idea for a work comes to him.

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
Must
Belief
Work
Simple
Commissioned
Believe
Idea
Believes
Good
Comes
Simplicity
Artist
Wait
Sense
Works
Art
Create
Ideas
Waiting

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Art is our chief means of breaking bread with the dead.
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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.
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As a poet, there is only one political duty, and that is to defend one's language from corruption.
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I'm always amazed at the American practice of allowing one party to a homosexual act to remain passive--it's so undemocratic. Sexmust be mutual.
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To the man-in-the-street, who, I'm sorry to say, is a keen observer of life. The word Intellectual suggests straight away. A man who's untrue to his wife.
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When one looks into the window of a store which sells devotional art objects, one can't help wishing the iconoclasts had won.
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My poetry doesn't change from place to place - it changes with the years. It's very important to be one's age. You get ideas you have to turn down - 'I'm sorry, no longer' 'I'm sorry, not yet.
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Men will pay large sums to whores for telling them they are not bores.
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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.
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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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Caesar's double-bed is warm As an unimportant clerk Writes i do not like my work On a pink official form.
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It is a sad fact about our culture that a poet can earn much more money writing or talking about his art than he can by practicing it.
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Love each other or perish.
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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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One of the troubles of our times is that we are all, I think, precocious as personalities and backward as characters.
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Encased in talent like a uniform, The rank of every poet is well known They can amaze us like a thunderstorm, Or die so young, or live for years alone.
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All sins tend to be addictive, and the terminal point of addiction is damnation.
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A man has his distinctive personal scent which his wife, his children and his dog can recognize. A crowd has a generalized stink. The public is odorless.
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Weep for the lives your wishes never led.
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