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Anyone who has a child today should train him to be either a physicist or a ballet dancer. Then he'll escape.
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
Child
Anyone
Physicist
Today
Ballet
Children
Dancer
Escape
Train
Dance
Either
More quotes by W. H. Auden
All the rest is silence On the other side of the wall, And the silence ripeness, And the ripeness all.
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The windiest militant trash Important Persons shout Is not so crude as our wish: What mad Nijinsky wrote About Diaghilev Is true of the normal heart For the error bred in the bone Of each woman and each man Craves what it cannot have Not universal love But to be loved alone.
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Every man carries with him through life a mirror, as unique and impossible to get rid of as his shadow.
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We would rather be ruined than changed. We would rather die in our dread than climb the cross of the moment and let our illusions die.
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All I have is a voice.
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Some writers confuse authenticity, which they ought always to aim at, with originality, which they should never bother about.
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In relation to a writer, most readers believe in the Double Standard: they may be unfaithful to him as often as they like, but he must never, never be unfaithful to them.
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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.
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Without communication with the dead, a fully human life is not possible.
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A god who is both self-sufficient and content to remain so could not interest us enough to raise the question of his existence.
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Recipe for the upbringing of a poet: 'As much neurosis as the child can bear.
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The actors today really need the whip hand. They're so lazy. They haven't got the sense of pride in their profession that the less socially elevated musical comedy and music hall people or acrobats have. The theater has never been any good since the actors became gentlemen.
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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.
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History marched to the drums of a clear idea...
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The older lives like not to be stood in rows or at right angles.
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Of course,Behaviourism 'works'. So does torture.
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A false enchantment can all too easily last a lifetime.
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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.
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Intellectual disgrace Stares from every human face, And the seas of pity lie Locked and frozen in each eye.
W. H. Auden
I will love you forever swears the poet. I find this easy to swear too. I will love you at 4:15 pm next Tuesday - Is that still as easy?
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