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Adjectives are the potbelly of poetry.
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
Adjectives
Poetry
More quotes by W. H. Auden
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
By mourning tongues The death of the poet was kept from his poems.
W. H. Auden
We all have these places where shy humiliations gambol on sunny afternoons.
W. H. Auden
Soft as the earth is mankind and both need to be altered.
W. H. Auden
Money is the necessity that frees us from necessity.
W. H. Auden
Into this neutral air Where blind skyscrapers use Their full height to proclaim The strength of Collective Man, Each language pours its vain Competitive excuse.
W. H. Auden
My deepest feeling about politicians is that they are dangerous lunatics to be avoided when possible and carefully humored people, above all, to whom one must never tell the truth.
W. H. Auden
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
A poet is a professional maker of verbal objects.
W. H. Auden
You owe it to all of us all get on with what you're good at.
W. H. Auden
Yet no one hears his own remarks as prose.
W. H. Auden
The poet who writes free verse is like Robinson Crusoe on his desert island: he must do all his cooking, laundry and darning for himself. In a few exceptional cases, this manly independence produces something original and impressive, but more often the result is squalor - dirty sheets on the unmade bed and empty bottles on the unswept floor.
W. H. Auden
Weep for the lives your wishes never led.
W. H. Auden
Good can imagine Evil but Evil cannot imagine Good.
W. H. Auden
To be happy means to be free, not from pain or fear, but from care or anxiety.
W. H. Auden
We are not commanded (or forbidden) to love our mates, our children, our friends, our country because such affections come naturally to us and are good in themselves, although we may corrupt them. We are commanded to love our neighbor because our natural attitude toward the other is one of either indifference or hostility.
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 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
I think the first prerequisite to civilization is an ability to make polite conversation.
W. H. Auden
Encased in talent like a uniform, The rank of every poet is well known They can amaze us like a thunderstorm, Or die so young, or live for years alone.
W. H. Auden
