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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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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
Speak
Rightly
Important
Pleasures
Men
Lower
Nonsense
Hungry
Higher
Pleasure
Happiness
Philosophize
More quotes by W. H. Auden
All pity is self-pity.
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Time will say nothing but I told you so, Time only knows the price we have to pay If I could tell you I would let you know.
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Poetry might be defined as the clear expression of mixed feelings.
W. H. Auden
Literary confessors are contemptible, like beggars who exhibit their sores for money, but not so contemptible as the public that buys their books.
W. H. Auden
Though one cannot always Remember exactly why one has been happy, There is no forgetting that one was.
W. H. Auden
We would rather be ruined than changed. We would rather die in our dread than climb the cross of the moment and let our illusions die.
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The surest sign that a man has a genuine taste of his own is that he is uncertain of it.
W. H. Auden
I used to try and concentrate the poem so much that there wasn't a word that wasn't essential. This leads to becoming boring and constipated.
W. H. Auden
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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A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us.
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If equal affection cannot be, let the more loving be me.
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One of the most horrible, yet most important, discoveries of our age has been that, if you really wish to destroy a person and turn him into an automaton, the surest method is not physical torture, in the strict sense, but simply to keep him awake, i.e., in an existential relation to life without intermission.
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Detective stories have nothing to do with works of art.
W. H. Auden
We are all here on earth to help others what on earth the others are here for I don't know.
W. H. Auden
Of all possible subjects, travel is the most difficult for an artist, as it is the easiest for a journalist.
W. H. Auden
A vice in common can be the ground of a friendship but not a virtue in common. X and Y may be friends because they are both drunkards or womanizers but, if they are both sober and chaste, they are friends for some other reason.
W. H. Auden
The condition of mankind is, and always has been, so miserable and depraved that, if anyone were to say to the poet: For God's sake stop singing and do something useful like putting on the kettle or fetching bandages, what just reason could he give for refusing?
W. H. Auden
The theater has never been any good since the actors became gentlemen.
W. H. Auden
Before people complain of the obscurity of modern poetry, they should first examine their consciences and ask themselves with how many people and on how many occasions they have genuinely and profoundly shared some experience with another...
W. H. Auden
To the man-in-the-street, who, I'm sorry to say, is a keen observer of life. The word Intellectual suggests straight away. A man who's untrue to his wife.
W. H. Auden
