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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
Listen
Music
Nothing
Purely
Good
Technical
Aside
Analysis
Grateful
Except

More quotes by W. H. Auden

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Private faces in public places Are wiser and nicer Than public faces in private places.
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To me Art's subject is the human clay, / And landscape but a background to a torso / All Cezanne's apples I would give away / For one small Goya or a Daumier.
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Most people enjoy the sight of their own handwriting as they enjoy the smell of their own farts.
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The way to read a fairy tale is to throw yourself in.
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A false enchantment can all too easily last a lifetime.
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An unmanly sort of man whose love life seems to have been largely confined to crying in laps and playing mouse.
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I think the first prerequisite to civilization is an ability to make polite conversation.
W. H. Auden
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The countenances of children, like those of animals, are masks, not faces, for they have not yet developed a significant profile of their own.
W. H. Auden
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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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We must love one another or die
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Murder is unique in that it abolishes the party it injures, so that society has to take the place of the victim and on his behalf demand atonement or grant forgiveness it is the one crime in which society has a direct interest.
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The sky is darkening like a stain Something is going to fall like rain And it won't be flowers
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As a rule, it was the pleasure-haters who became unjust.
W. H. Auden
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Harrow the house of the dead look shining at New styles of architecture, a change of heart.
W. H. Auden
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We are all here on earth to help others what on earth the others are here for I don't know.
W. H. Auden
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Criticism should be a casual conversation.
W. H. Auden
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Those to whom evil is doneDo evil in return.
W. H. Auden
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To discover how to be human now is the reason we follow this star.
W. H. Auden
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All works of art are commissioned in the sense that no artist can create one by a simple act of will but must wait until what he believes to be a good idea for a work comes to him.
W. H. Auden
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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.
W. H. Auden