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Political history is far too criminal to be a fit subject of study for the young. Children should acquire their heroes and villians from fiction.
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
There are good books which are only for adults. There are no good books which are only for children.
W. H. Auden
If there are any souls in hell, it is because that is where they insist on being.
W. H. Auden
Evil is unspectacular and always human, and shares our bed and eats at our own table.
W. H. Auden
A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us.
W. H. Auden
The way to read a fairy tale is to throw yourself in.
W. H. Auden
Had Greek civilization never existed ... we would never have become fully conscious.
W. H. Auden
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.
W. H. Auden
The poet who writes free verse is like Robinson Crusoe on his desert island: he must do all his cooking, laundry and darning for himself. In a few exceptional cases, this manly independence produces something original and impressive, but more often the result is squalor - dirty sheets on the unmade bed and empty bottles on the unswept floor.
W. H. Auden
What the poet says has never been said before, but, once he has said it, his readers recognize its validity for themselves.
W. H. Auden
Learn from your dreams what you lack.
W. H. Auden
There was still gold and silver in the mountains, And hunger was a more immediate sorrow
W. H. Auden
If it form the one landscape that we the inconstant ones Are consistently homesick for, this is chiefly Because it dissolves in water.
W. H. Auden
A shilling life will give you all the facts.
W. H. Auden
In the end, art is small beer. The really serious things are earning one's living so as not to be a parasite and loving one's neighbor.
W. H. Auden
There is a certain kind of person who is so dominated by the desire to be loved for himself alone that he has constantly to test those around him by tiresome behavior what he says and does must be admired, not because it is intrinsically admirable, but because it is his remark, his act. Does not this explain a good deal of avant-garde art?
W. H. Auden
If we really want to live, we'd better start at once to try.
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
To read is to translate, for no two persons' experiences are the same. A bad reader is like a bad translator: he interprets literally when he ought to paraphrase and paraphrases when he ought to interpret literally.
W. H. Auden
One can only blaspheme if one believes.
W. H. Auden
To ask the hard question is simple.
W. H. Auden
