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The definition of prayer is paying careful and concentrated attention to something other than your own constructions.
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
Between friends differences in taste or opinion are irritating in direct proportion to their triviality.
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If we really want to live, we'd better start at once to try.
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Like everything which is not the involuntary result of fleeting emotion but the creation of time and will, any marriage, happy or unhappy, is infinitely more interesting than any romance, however passionate.
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It's impossible to represent a saint [in Art]. It becomes boring. Perhaps because he is, like the Saturday Evening Post people, inthe position of having almost infinitely free will.
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We till shadowed days are done, We must weep and sing Duty's conscious wrong, The Devil in the clock
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Long ago the accusations had begun, And suddenly knew by whom it had been judged
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Criticism should be a casual conversation.
W. H. Auden
Beauty, midnight, vision dies: Let the winds of dawn that blow Softly round your dreaming head Such a day of welcome show Eye and knocking heart may bless, Find our mortal world enough Noons of dryness find you fed By the involuntary powers, Nights of insult let you pass Watched by every human love.
W. H. Auden
Christmas and Easter can be subjects for poetry, but Good Friday, like Auschwitz, cannot. The reality is so horrible it is not surprising that people should have found it a stumbling block to faith.
W. H. Auden
There has been a vast output of critical studies in contemporary poetry, some of them first rate, but I do not think that , as a rule, a poet should read them.
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Swans in the winter air A white perfection have
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Beloved, we are always in the wrong, Handling so clumsily our stupid lives, Suffering too little or too long, Too careful even in our selfish loves: The decorative manias we obey Die in grimaces round us every day, Yet through their tohu-bohu comes a voice Which utters an absurd command - Rejoice.
W. H. Auden
Laziness acknowledges the relation of the present to the past but ignores its relation to the future impatience acknowledge its relation to the future but ignores its relation to the past neither the lazy nor the impatient man, that is, accepts the present instant in its full reality and so cannot love his neighbour completely.
W. H. Auden
An honest self-portrait is extremely rare because a man who has reached the degree of self-consciousness presupposed by the desire to paint his own portrait has almost always also developed an ego-consciousness which paints himself painting himself, and introduces artificial highlights and dramatic shadows.
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
A daydream is a meal at which images are eaten. Some of us are gourmets, some gourmands, and a good many take their images precooked out of a can and swallow them down whole, absent-mindedly and with little relish.
W. H. Auden
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.
W. H. Auden
In addition to English, at least one ancient language, probably Greek or Hebrew, and two modern languages would be required.
W. H. Auden
There is no love There are only the various envies, all of them sad.
W. H. Auden
All the literati keep An imaginary friend.
W. H. Auden
