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Pleasure is by no means an infallible critical guide, but it is the least fallible.
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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Infallible
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Least
Pleasure
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Fallible
More quotes by W. H. Auden
Aside from purely technical analysis, nothing can be said about music, except when it is bad when it is good, one can only listen and be grateful.
W. H. Auden
As biological organisms made of matter, we are subject to the laws of physics and biology: as conscious persons who create our own history we are free to decide what that history shall be. Without science, we should have no notion of equality without art, no notion of liberty.
W. H. Auden
Between the ages of twenty and forty we are engaged in the process of discovering who we are, which involves learning the differences between accidental limitations which it is our duty to outgrow and the necessary limitations of our nature beyond which we cannot trespass with impunity.
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A professor is someone who talks in someone else's sleep.
W. H. Auden
The class distinctions proper to a democratic society are not those of rank or money, still less, as is apt to happen when these are abandoned, of race, but of age.
W. H. Auden
Genealogies are admirable things, provided they do not encourage the curious delusion that some families are older than others.
W. H. Auden
To be happy means to be free, not from pain or fear, but from care or anxiety.
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The sky is darkening like a stain Something is going to fall like rain And it won't be flowers
W. H. Auden
Adjectives are the potbelly of poetry.
W. H. Auden
About suffering they were never wrong, The Old Masters.
W. H. Auden
We honor founders of these starving cities, Whose honor is the image of our sorrow.
W. H. Auden
It is nonsense to speak of 'higher' and 'lower' pleasures. To a hungry man it is, rightly, more important that he eat than that he philosophize.
W. H. Auden
But once in a while the odd thing happens Once in a while the dream comes true And the whole pattern of life is altered Once in a while, the moon turns blue
W. H. Auden
Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can: all of them make me laugh.
W. H. Auden
It's better to say, 'I'm suffering,' than to say, 'This landscape is ugly.
W. H. Auden
Thank God for books as an alternative to conversation.
W. H. Auden
A poem is a verbal artifact which must be as skillfully and solidly constructed as a table or a motorcycle.
W. H. Auden
If time were the wicked sheriff in a horse opera, I'd pay for riding lessons and take his gun away.
W. H. Auden
Whatever the field under discussion, those who engage in debate must not only believe in each other's good faith, but also in their capacity to arrive at the truth.
W. H. Auden
Caesar's double-bed is warm As an unimportant clerk Writes i do not like my work On a pink official form.
W. H. Auden
