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It's better to say, 'I'm suffering,' than to say, 'This landscape is ugly.

W. H. Auden

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W. H. Auden
Age: 66 †
Born: 1907
Born: February 21
Died: 1973
Died: September 28
Author
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Essayist
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Literary Critic
Literary Historian
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Jórvík
Wystan Hugh Auden
Wystan Auden
Wystan H Auden
W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
Better
Landscape
Ugly
Criticism
Suffering

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Attacking bad books is not only a waste of time but also bad for the character. If I find a book really bad, the only interest I can derive from writing about it has to come from myself, from such display of intelligence, wit and malice as I can contrive. One cannot review a bad book without showing off.
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I see little hope for a peaceful world until men are excluded from the realm of foreign policy altogether and all decisions concerning international relations are reserved for women, preferably married ones.
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The chances are that, in the course of his lifetime, the major poet will write more bad poems than the minor, simply because major poets write a lot.
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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
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Doom is dark and deeper than any sea-dingle.
W. H. Auden
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Cats can be very funny, and have the oddest ways of showing they're glad to see you.
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Almost all of our relationships begin and most of them continue as forms of mutual exploitation, a mental or physical barter, to be terminated when one or both parties run out of goods.
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Beauty, midnight, vision dies: Let the winds of dawn that blow Softly round your dreaming head Such a day of welcome show Eye and knocking heart may bless, Find our mortal world enough Noons of dryness find you fed By the involuntary powers, Nights of insult let you pass Watched by every human love.
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Sincerity is technique.
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So long as we think of it objectively, time is Fate or Chance, the factor in our lives for which we are not responsible, and about which we can do nothing but when we begin to think of it subjectively, we feel responsible for our time, and the notion of punctuality arises.
W. H. Auden
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I don't think the mystical experience can be verbalized. When the ego disappears, so does power over language.
W. H. Auden
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Desire, even in its wildest tantrums, can neither persuade me it is love nor stop me from wishing it were.
W. H. Auden
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Thank God for books as an alternative to conversation.
W. H. Auden
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A shilling life will give you all the facts.
W. H. Auden
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Had Greek civilization never existed ... we would never have become fully conscious.
W. H. Auden
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The most important truths are likely to be those which society at that time least wants to hear.
W. H. Auden
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Accurate scholarship can unearth the whole offence from luther untill noe that has driven a culture mad. From what occured at linz what huge imago made a psychopathic god. i and the public know what all schoolchildren learn those to whom evil is done do evil in return.
W. H. Auden
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Those who hate to go to bed fear death those who hate to get up fear life.
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Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone. Silence the pianos and with muffled drum Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
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Who on earth invented the silly convention that it is boring or impolite to talk shop? Nothing is more interesting to listen to, especially if the shop is not one's own.
W. H. Auden