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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
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Jórvík
Wystan Hugh Auden
Wystan Auden
Wystan H Auden
W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
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Plain
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Subtle
Still
Clever
Plainer
Ever
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Ornamental
Book
Critics
Provincial
Made
Various
Crude
Whose
Crave
More quotes by W. H. Auden
No good opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible.
W. H. Auden
Who on earth invented the silly convention that it is boring or impolite to talk shop? Nothing is more interesting to listen to, especially if the shop is not one's own.
W. H. Auden
Earth, receive an honored guest William Yeats is laid to rest. Let the Irish vessel lie Emptied of its poetry.
W. H. Auden
God bless the USA, so large, so friendly, and so rich.
W. H. Auden
And make us as Newton was, who in his garden watching The apple falling towards England, became aware Between himself and her of an eternal tie.
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All wishes, whatever their apparent content, have the same and unvarying meaning: I refuse to be what I am.
W. H. Auden
Private faces in public places Are wiser and nicer Than public faces in private places.
W. H. Auden
I think the first prerequisite to civilization is an ability to make polite conversation.
W. H. Auden
About suffering they were never wrong, The Old Masters.
W. H. Auden
A poet is a professional maker of verbal objects.
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Geniuses are the luckiest of mortals because what they must do is the same as what they most want to do.
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The most difficult problem in personal knowledge, whether of oneself or of others, is the problem of guessing when to think as a historian and when to think as an anthropologist.
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Young people, who are still uncertain of their identity, often try on a succession of masks in the hope of finding the one which suits them - the one, in fact, which is not a mask.
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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
Lost in a haunted wood, Children afraid of the night Who have never been happy or good.
W. H. Auden
What is a Professor of Poetry? How can poetry be professed?
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
The nightingales are sobbing in The orchards of our mothers, And hearts that we broke long ago Have long been breaking others Tears are round, the sea is deep: Roll them overboard and sleep.
W. H. Auden
To make one, there must be two.
W. H. Auden
The definition of prayer is paying careful and concentrated attention to something other than your own constructions.
W. H. Auden