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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

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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
Grateful
Except
Listen
Music
Nothing
Purely
Good
Technical
Aside
Analysis

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The older lives like not to be stood in rows or at right angles.
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The center that I cannot find is known to my unconscious mind.
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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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See without looking, hear without listening, breathe without asking.
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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.
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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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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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The critical opinions of a writer should always be taken with a large grain of salt. For the most part, they are manifestations of his debate with himself as to what he should do next and what he should avoid.
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My poetry doesn't change from place to place - it changes with the years. It's very important to be one's age. You get ideas you have to turn down - 'I'm sorry, no longer' 'I'm sorry, not yet.
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A shilling life will give you all the facts.
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A craftsman knows in advance what the finished result will be, while the artist knows only what it will be when he has finished it.
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Fate succumbs many a species: one alone jeopardises itself.
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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.
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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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Ideally, government is the means by which all the individual wills are assured complete freedom of moral choice and at the same time prevented from ever clashing.
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What we have not named as a symbol escapes our notice.
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Drama is based on the Mistake.
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Private faces in public places Are wiser and nicer Than public faces in private places.
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Murder is commoner among cooks than among members of any other profession.
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