Quote

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

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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
Listen
Plain
Books
Cooks
Stills
Subtle
Still
Clever
Plainer
Ever
Cooking
Ornamental
Book
Critics
Provincial
Made
Various
Crude
Whose
Crave

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The Ogre does what ogres can, Deeds quite impossible for Man, But one prize is beyond his reach, The Ogre cannot master Speech: About a subjugated plain, Among its desperate and slain, The Ogre stalks with hands on hips, While drivel gushes from his lips.
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Those to whom evil is doneDo evil in return.
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Criticism should be a casual conversation.
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A small grove massacred to the last ash, An oak with heart-rot, give away the show: This great society is going to smash They cannot fool us with how fast they go, How much they cost each other and the gods. A culture is no better than its woods.
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Poetry might be defined as the clear expression of mixed feelings.
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Language is the mother, not the handmaiden, of thought words will tell you things you never thought or felt before.
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Whatever the field under discussion, those who engage in debate must not only believe in each other's good faith, but also in their capacity to arrive at the truth.
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A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us.
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Lovers have lived so long with giants and elves, they won't believe again in their own size.
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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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