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A poet must never make a statement simply because it is sounds poetically exciting he must also believe it to be true.
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
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
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
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.
W. H. Auden
The only reason the Protestants and Catholics have given up the idea of universal domination is because they've realised they can't get away with it.
W. H. Auden
A person incapable of imaging another world than given to him by his senses would be subhuman, and a person who identifies his imaginary world with the world of sensory fact has become insane.
W. H. Auden
You know there are no secrets in America. It's quite different in England, where people think of a secret as a shared relation between two people.
W. H. Auden
Aphorisms are essentially an aristocratic genre of writing. The aphorist does not argue or explain, he asserts and implicit in his assertion is a conviction that he is wiser and more intelligent than his readers.
W. H. Auden
What living occasion can, Be just to the absent?
W. H. Auden
Great art is clear thinking about mixed feelings.
W. H. Auden
A craftsman knows in advance what the finished result will be, while the artist knows only what it will be when he has finished it.
W. H. Auden
What answer to the meaning of existence should one require beyond the right to exercise one's gifts?
W. H. Auden
Base words are uttered only by the base And can for such at once be understood But noble platitudes - ah, there's a case Where the most careful scrutiny is needed To tell a voice that's genuinely good From one that's base but merely has succeeded.
W. H. Auden
Alone, alone, about the dreadful wood / Of conscious evil runs a lost mankind, / Dreading to find its Father.
W. H. Auden
All works of art are commissioned in the sense that no artist can create one by a simple act of will but must wait until what he believes to be a good idea for a work comes to him.
W. H. Auden
I know nothing, except what everyone knows - if there when Grace dances, I should dance.
W. H. Auden
I don't think the mystical experience can be verbalized. When the ego disappears, so does power over language.
W. H. Auden
Nobody knows what the cause is, though some pretend they do it like some hidden assassin waiting to strike at you. Childless women get it, and men when they retire it as if there had to be some outlet for their foiled creative fire.
W. H. Auden
You need not see what someone is doing to know if it is his vocation, you have only to watch his eyes: a cook mixing a sauce, a surgeon making a primary incision, a clerk completing a bill of lading wear the same rapt expression, forgetting themselves in a function. How beautiful it is, that eye-on-the-obje ct look.
W. H. Auden
I don't get acting jobs because of my looks.
W. H. Auden
To be happy means to be free, not from pain or fear, but from care or anxiety.
W. H. Auden
