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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

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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
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More quotes by W. H. Auden

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Caesar's double-bed is warm As an unimportant clerk Writes i do not like my work On a pink official form.
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I see little hope for a peaceful world until men are excluded from the realm of foreign policy altogether and all decisions concerning international relations are reserved for women, preferably married ones.
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Thou shalt not answer questionnaires Or quizzes upon world affairs, Nor with compliance Take any test. Thou shalt not sit with statisticians nor commit A social science.
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For time is inches And the heart's changes, Where ghost has haunted Lost and wanted.
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Most people call something profound, not because it is near some important truth but because it is distant from ordinary life. Thus, darkness is profound to the eye, silence to the ear what-is-not is the profundity of what-is.
W. H. Auden
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Be subtle, various, ornamental, clever, And do not listen to those critics ever Whose crude provincial gullets crave in books Plain cooking made still plainer by plain cooks.
W. H. Auden
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I and the public know What all schoolchildren learn, Those to whom evil is done Do evil in return.
W. H. Auden
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A vice in common can be the ground of a friendship but not a virtue in common. X and Y may be friends because they are both drunkards or womanizers but, if they are both sober and chaste, they are friends for some other reason.
W. H. Auden
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Every man carries with him through life a mirror, as unique and impossible to get rid of as his shadow.
W. H. Auden
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A poor American feels guilty at being poor, but less guilty than an American rentier who has inherited wealth but is doing nothingto increase it what can the latter do but take to drink and psychoanalysis?
W. H. Auden
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Men will pay large sums to whores for telling them they are not bores.
W. H. Auden
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Geniuses are the luckiest of mortals because what they must do is the same as what they most want to do.
W. H. Auden
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Earth, receive an honored guest William Yeats is laid to rest. Let the Irish vessel lie Emptied of its poetry.
W. H. Auden
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A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us.
W. H. Auden
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Does God judge us by appearances? I Suspect that He does.
W. H. Auden
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We were put on this earth to make things.
W. H. Auden
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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
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All good art is in the nature of a letter written to amuse a sick friend. Too much art, particularly in our time, is only a letter written to oneself.
W. H. Auden
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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
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The definition of prayer is paying careful and concentrated attention to something other than your own constructions.
W. H. Auden