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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.
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
Men
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More quotes by W. H. Auden
All the literati keep An imaginary friend.
W. H. Auden
It's frightfully important for a writer to be his age, not to be younger or older than he is. One might ask, What should I write at the age of sixty-four, but never, What should I write in 1940.
W. H. Auden
I said earlier that I do not believe an artist's life throws much light upon his works. I do believe, however, that, more often than most people realize, his works may throw light upon his life. An artist with certain imaginative ideas in his head may then involve himself in relationships which are congenial to them.
W. H. Auden
The camera may do justice to laughter, but must degrade sorrow.
W. H. Auden
Few can remember clearly when innocence came to a sudden end, the moment at which we ask for the first time: Am I loved?
W. H. Auden
Caesar's double-bed is warm As an unimportant clerk Writes i do not like my work On a pink official form.
W. H. Auden
Art is our chief means of breaking bread with the dead.
W. H. Auden
I'll love you, dear, I'll love you till China and Africa meet and the river jumps over the mountain and the salmon sing in the street.
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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
Sexual fidelity is more important in a homosexual relationship than in any other. In other relationships there are a variety of ties. But here, fidelity is the only bond.
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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
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.
W. H. Auden
One cannot walk through an assembly factory and not feel that one is in Hell.
W. H. Auden
Death is the sound of distant thunder at a picnic.
W. H. Auden
Money is the necessity that frees us from necessity. Of all novelists in any country, Trollope best understands the role of money. Compared with him even Balzac is a romantic.
W. H. Auden
Now is the age of anxiety.
W. H. Auden
Had Greek civilization never existed ... we would never have become fully conscious.
W. H. Auden
There has been a vast output of critical studies in contemporary poetry, some of them first rate, but I do not think that , as a rule, a poet should read them.
W. H. Auden
Hunger allows no choice.
W. H. Auden
Does God judge us by appearances? I Suspect that He does.
W. H. Auden
