Quote

Rhymes, meters, stanza forms, etc., are like servants. If the master is fair enough to win their affection and firm enough to command their respect, the result is an orderly happy household. If he is too tyrannical, they give notice if he lacks authority, they become slovenly, impertinent, drunk and dishonest.

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
Give
Poetry
Affection
Rhyme
Meters
Enough
Respect
Fairs
Etc
Tyrannical
Giving
Results
Fair
Household
Rhymes
Like
Winning
Master
Servant
Dishonest
Happy
Forms
Notice
Meter
Art
Result
Firm
Lacks
Stanza
Form
Masters
Drunk
Orderly
Slovenly
Become
Authority
Command
Servants
Impertinent

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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.
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What the mass media offers is not popular art, but entertainment which is intended to be consumed like food, forgotten, and replaced by a new dish.
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Harrow the house of the dead look shining at New styles of architecture, a change of heart.
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It's a pity I am so impatient and careless, as any ordinary person could learn all the techniques of photography in a week. It is the democratic art, i.e. technical skill is practically eliminated - the more foolproof cameras become with focusing and exposure gadgets the better - and artistic quality depends only on choice of subject.
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Poetry might be defined as the clear expression of mixed feelings.
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The parlour cars and Pullmans are packed also with scented assassins, salad-eaters who murder on milk.
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Let all your thinks be thanks.
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There are good books which are only for adults. There are no good books which are only for children.
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It is, for example, axiomatic that we should all think of ourselves as being more sensitive than other people because, when we are insensitive in our dealings with others, we cannot be aware of it at the time: conscious insensitivity is a self-contradiction.
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The way to read a fairy tale is to throw yourself in.
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A poet's hope: to be, like some valley cheese, local, but prized elsewhere.
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There was still gold and silver in the mountains, And hunger was a more immediate sorrow
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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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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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A man is a form of life that dreams in order to act and acts in order to dream.
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Art is born of humiliation.
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To save your world you asked this man to die would this man, could he see you now, ask why?
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Marriage is rarely bliss But, surely it would be worse As particles to pelt At thousands of miles per sec About a universe In which a lover's kiss Would either not be felt Or break the loved one's neck.
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You will be a poet because you will always be humiliated.
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Narcissus does not fall in love with his reflection because it is beautiful, but because it is his. If it were his beauty that enthralled him, he would be set free in a few years by its fading.
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