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One cannot review a bad book without showing off.
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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Wystan Hugh Auden
Wystan Auden
Wystan H Auden
W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
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More quotes by W. H. Auden
Dance till the stars come down from the rafters Dance, Dance, Dance 'till you drop.
W. H. Auden
Man desires to be free and he desires to feel important. This places him in a dilemma, for the more he emancipates himself from necessity the less important he feels.
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
Detective stories have nothing to do with works of art.
W. H. Auden
In a game, just losing is almost as satisfying as just winning... In life the loser's score is always zero.
W. H. Auden
It's usually the stupid people that develop long illnesses. You need more than indolence and selfishness, you need endurance to make a good patient.
W. H. Auden
You shall love your crooked neighbour, with your crooked heart.
W. H. Auden
Oh, how I wish that Orwell were still alive, so that I could read his comments on contemporary events!
W. H. Auden
All poets adore explosions, thunderstorms, tornadoes, conflagrations, ruins, scenes of spectacular carnage. The poetic imagination is not at all a desirable quality in a statesman.
W. H. Auden
But if a stranger in the train asks me my occupation, I never answer writer for fear that he may go on to ask me what I write, and to answer poetry would embarrass us both, for we both know that nobody can earn a living simply by writing poetry.
W. H. Auden
We are all here on earth to help others.
W. H. Auden
To ask the hard question is simple.
W. H. Auden
Money is the necessity that frees us from necessity. Of all novelists in any country, Trollope best understands the role of money. Compared with him even Balzac is a romantic.
W. H. Auden
The truly tragic kind of suffering is the kind produced and defiantly insisted upon by the hero himself so that, instead of making him better, it makes him worse and when he dies he is not reconciled to the law but defiant, that is, damned. Lear is not a tragic hero, Othello is.
W. H. Auden
Drama is based on the Mistake.
W. H. Auden
A poet feels the impulse to create a work of art when the passive awe provoked by an event is transformed into a desire to express that awe in a rite of worship.
W. H. Auden
I said earlier that I do not believe an artist's life throws much light upon his works. I do believe, however, that, more often than most people realize, his works may throw light upon his life. An artist with certain imaginative ideas in his head may then involve himself in relationships which are congenial to them.
W. H. Auden
There are good books which are only for adults. There are no good books which are only for children.
W. H. Auden
The sky is darkening like a stain Something is going to fall like rain And it won't be flowers
W. H. Auden
Thank God for books as an alternative to conversation.
W. H. Auden
