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The critical opinions of a writer should always be taken with a large grain of salt. For the most part, they are manifestations of his debate with himself as to what he should do next and what he should avoid.
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
All sins tend to be addictive, and the terminal point of addiction is damnation.
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As a rule, it was the pleasure-haters who became unjust.
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I'll love you till the ocean Is folded and hung up to dry And the seven stars go squawking Like geese about the sky.
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It is nonsense to speak of 'higher' and 'lower' pleasures. To a hungry man it is, rightly, more important that he eat than that he philosophize.
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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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Pleasure is by no means an infallible critical guide, but it is the least fallible.
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An honest self-portrait is extremely rare because a man who has reached the degree of self-consciousness presupposed by the desire to paint his own portrait has almost always also developed an ego-consciousness which paints himself painting himself, and introduces artificial highlights and dramatic shadows.
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Acts of injustice done Between the setting and the rising sun In history lie like bones, each one.
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Health is the state about which medicine has nothing to say.
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Every autobiography is concerned with two characters, a Don Quixote, the Ego, and a Sancho Panza, the Self.
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I don't think the mystical experience can be verbalized. When the ego disappears, so does power over language.
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Had Greek civilization never existed ... we would never have become fully conscious.
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Rhymes, meters, stanza forms, etc., are like servants. If the master is fair enough to win their affection and firm enough to command their respect, the result is an orderly happy household. If he is too tyrannical, they give notice if he lacks authority, they become slovenly, impertinent, drunk and dishonest.
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Those who will not reason, perish in the act. Those who will not act, perish for that reason.
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Poetry makes nothing happen.
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Fate succumbs many a species: one alone jeopardises itself.
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There is no love There are only the various envies, all of them sad.
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The habit-forming pain, Mismanagement and grief: We must suffer them all again.
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The definition of prayer is paying careful and concentrated attention to something other than your own constructions.
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Dance, dance, dance till you drop.
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