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Man desires to be free and he desires to feel important. This places him in a dilemma, for the more he emancipates himself from necessity the less important he feels.
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
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More quotes by W. H. Auden
To read is to translate, for no two persons' experiences are the same. A bad reader is like a bad translator: he interprets literally when he ought to paraphrase and paraphrases when he ought to interpret literally.
W. H. Auden
A man has his distinctive personal scent which his wife, his children and his dog can recognize. A crowd has a generalized stink. The public is odorless.
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
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.
W. H. Auden
Language is the mother, not the handmaiden, of thought words will tell you things you never thought or felt before.
W. H. Auden
Hunger allows no choice.
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Though one cannot always Remember exactly why one has been happy, There is no forgetting that one was.
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Thou shalt not answer questionnaires Or quizzes upon world affairs, Nor with compliance Take any test. Thou shalt not sit with statisticians nor commit A social science.
W. H. Auden
Sincerity is technique.
W. H. Auden
Every high C accurately struck demolishes the theory that we are the irresponsible puppets of fate or chance.
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Pleasure is by no means an infallible critical guide, but it is the least fallible.
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Lost in a haunted wood, Children afraid of the night Who have never been happy or good.
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It's better to say, 'I'm suffering,' than to say, 'This landscape is ugly.
W. H. Auden
Poetry makes nothing happen.
W. H. Auden
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.
W. H. Auden
I know nothing, except what everyone knows - if there when Grace dances, I should dance.
W. H. Auden
All pity is self-pity.
W. H. Auden
The element of craftsmanship in poetry is obscured by the fact that all men are taught to speak and most to read and write, while very few men are taught to draw or paint or write music.
W. H. Auden
Choice of attention - to pay attention to this and ignore that - is to the inner life what choice of action is to the outer. In both cases, a man is responsible for his choice and must accept the consequences, whatever they may be.
W. H. Auden
The primary function of poetry, as of all the arts, is to make us more aware of ourselves and the world around us. I do not know if such increased awareness makes us more moral or more efficient. I hope not. I think it makes us more human, and I am quite certain it makes us more difficult to deceive.
W. H. Auden
