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When someone between twenty and forty says, apropos of a work of art, 'I know what I like,' he is really saying 'I have no taste of my own but accept the taste of my cultural milieu.

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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Wystan Hugh Auden
Wystan Auden
Wystan H Auden
W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
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More quotes by W. H. Auden

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The element of craftsmanship in poetry is obscured by the fact that all men are taught to speak and most to read and write, while very few men are taught to draw or paint or write music.
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the child unlucky in his little State, Some hearth where freedom is excluded, A hive whose honey is fear and worry, Feels calmer now and somehow assured of escape
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It is, for example, axiomatic that we should all think of ourselves as being more sensitive than other people because, when we are insensitive in our dealings with others, we cannot be aware of it at the time: conscious insensitivity is a self-contradiction.
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All the rest is silence On the other side of the wall, And the silence ripeness, And the ripeness all.
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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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Language is the mother, not the handmaiden, of thought words will tell you things you never thought or felt before.
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All wishes, whatever their apparent content, have the same and unvarying meaning: I refuse to be what I am.
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Let me see what I wrote so I know what I think
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Sincerity is technique.
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No good opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible.
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In the deserts of the heart Let the healing fountain start.
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It's a pity I am so impatient and careless, as any ordinary person could learn all the techniques of photography in a week. It is the democratic art, i.e. technical skill is practically eliminated - the more foolproof cameras become with focusing and exposure gadgets the better - and artistic quality depends only on choice of subject.
W. H. Auden
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The poet marries the language, and out of this marriage the poem is born.
W. H. Auden
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No person can be a great leader unless he takes genuine joy in the successes of those under him.
W. H. Auden
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A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us.
W. H. Auden
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It is already possible to imagine a society in which the majority of the population, that is to say, its laborers, will have almost as much leisure as in earlier times was enjoyed by the aristocracy. When one recalls how aristocracies in the past actually behaved, the prospect is not cheerful.
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We must love one another or die
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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.
W. H. Auden
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The nightingales are sobbing in The orchards of our mothers, And hearts that we broke long ago Have long been breaking others Tears are round, the sea is deep: Roll them overboard and sleep.
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To ask the hard question is simple.
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