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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
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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
In the end, art is small beer. The really serious things are earning one's living so as not to be a parasite and loving one's neighbor.
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The ear tends to be lazy, craves the familiar and is shocked by the unexpected the eye, on the other hand, tends to be impatient, craves the novel and is bored by repetition.
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All I have is a voice.
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Drama is based on the Mistake.
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One cannot review a bad book without showing off.
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Precisely because we do not communicate by singing, a song can be out of place but not out of character it is just as credible that a stupid person should sing beautifully as that a clever person should do so.
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Doom is dark and deeper than any sea-dingle.
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Some writers confuse authenticity, which they ought always to aim at, with originality, which they should never bother about.
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Evil is unspectacular and always human, and shares our bed and eats at our own table.
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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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All pity is self-pity.
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Genealogies are admirable things, provided they do not encourage the curious delusion that some families are older than others.
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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?
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What the poet says has never been said before, but, once he has said it, his readers recognize its validity for themselves.
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To pray is to pay attention to something or someone other than oneself.
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Most people call something profound, not because it is near some important truth but because it is distant from ordinary life. Thus, darkness is profound to the eye, silence to the ear what-is-not is the profundity of what-is.
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Base words are uttered only by the base And can for such at once be understood But noble platitudes - ah, there's a case Where the most careful scrutiny is needed To tell a voice that's genuinely good From one that's base but merely has succeeded.
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Like love we don't know where or why Like love we cant compel or fly Like Love we often weep Like Love we seldom keep
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May it not be that, just as we have to have faith in Him, God has to have faith in us and, considering the history of the human race so far, may it not be that 'faith' is even more difficult for Him than it is for us?
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I sit in one of the dives On Fifty-second Street Uncertain and afraid As the clever hopes expire Of a low dishonest decade
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