Quote

Left to itself the masculine imagination has very little appreciation for the here and now it prefers to dwell on what is absent, on what has been or may be. If men are more punctual than women, it is because they know that, without the external discipline of clock time, they would never get anything done.

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
Without
Discipline
Punctual
Done
Imagination
Prefers
Never
Left
Absent
Would
Women
Dwell
Men
Littles
Masculine
Time
Anything
External
May
Appreciation
Little
Clock

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Murder is commoner among cooks than among members of any other profession.
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In a land which is fully settled, most men must accept their local environment or try to change it by political means only the exceptionally gifted or adventurous can leave to seek his fortune elsewhere. In America, on the other hand, to move on and make a fresh start somewhere else is still the normal reaction to dissatisfaction and failure.
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Intellectual disgrace Stares from every human face, And the seas of pity lie Locked and frozen in each eye.
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The actors today really need the whip hand. They're so lazy. They haven't got the sense of pride in their profession that the less socially elevated musical comedy and music hall people or acrobats have. The theater has never been any good since the actors became gentlemen.
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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.
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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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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.
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Money cannot buy the fuel of love but is excellent kindling.
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Oh, how I wish that Orwell were still alive, so that I could read his comments on contemporary events!
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Our sufferings and weaknesses, in so far as they are personal, are of no literary interest whatsoever. They are only interesting in so far as we can see them as typical of the human condition.
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A small grove massacred to the last ash, An oak with heart-rot, give away the show: This great society is going to smash They cannot fool us with how fast they go, How much they cost each other and the gods. A culture is no better than its woods.
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It's better to say, 'I'm suffering,' than to say, 'This landscape is ugly.
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Blessed be all metrical rules that forbid automatic responses, force us to have second thoughts, free us from the fetters of Self.
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Happy the hare at morning, for she cannot read The hunter's waking thoughts.
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My face looks like a wedding-cake left out in the rain.
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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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