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Great art is clear thinking about mixed feelings.

W. H. Auden

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W. H. Auden
Age: 66 †
Born: 1907
Born: February 21
Died: 1973
Died: September 28
Author
Composer
Essayist
Librettist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Playwright
Poet
Screenwriter
University Teacher
Writer
Jórvík
Wystan Hugh Auden
Wystan Auden
Wystan H Auden
W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
Clear
Feelings
Art
Great
Thinking
Mixed

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Few people take an interest in Iceland, but in those few the interest is passionate.
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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.
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In a land which is fully settled, most men must accept their local environment or try to change it by political means only the exceptionally gifted or adventurous can leave to seek his fortune elsewhere. In America, on the other hand, to move on and make a fresh start somewhere else is still the normal reaction to dissatisfaction and failure.
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Time and fevers burn away Individual beauty from Thoughtful children, and the grave Proves the child ephemeral
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O plunge your hands in water, Plunge them in up to the wrist Stare, stare in the basin And wonder what you've missed.
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I just try to put the thing out and hope somebody will read it. Someone says: 'Whom do you write for?' I reply: 'Do you read me?' If they say 'Yes,' I say, 'Do you like it?' If they say 'No,' then I say, 'I don't write for you.'
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Most people enjoy the sight of their own handwriting as they enjoy the smell of their own farts.
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The sky is darkening like a stain Something is going to fall like rain And it won't be flowers
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As a poet, there is only one political duty, and that is to defend one's language from corruption.
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Of all possible subjects, travel is the most difficult for an artist, as it is the easiest for a journalist.
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Dogmatic theological statements are neither logical propositions nor poetic utterances. They are ''shaggy dog'' stories they have a point, but he who tries too hard to get it will miss it.
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Nobody is ever sent to Hell: he or she insists on going there.
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All pity is self-pity.
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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.
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To me Art's subject is the human clay, / And landscape but a background to a torso / All Cezanne's apples I would give away / For one small Goya or a Daumier.
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Young people, who are still uncertain of their identity, often try on a succession of masks in the hope of finding the one which suits them - the one, in fact, which is not a mask.
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A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us.
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Criticism should be a casual conversation.
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Had Greek civilization never existed ... we would never have become fully conscious.
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the child unlucky in his little State, Some hearth where freedom is excluded, A hive whose honey is fear and worry, Feels calmer now and somehow assured of escape
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