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You will be a poet because you will always be humiliated.
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
Always
Humiliated
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Poetry
More quotes by W. H. Auden
God may reduce you on Judgment Day to tears of shame, reciting by heart the poems you would have written, had your life been good.
W. H. Auden
What answer to the meaning of existence should one require beyond the right to exercise one's gifts?
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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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There is a certain kind of person who is so dominated by the desire to be loved for himself alone that he has constantly to test those around him by tiresome behavior what he says and does must be admired, not because it is intrinsically admirable, but because it is his remark, his act. Does not this explain a good deal of avant-garde art?
W. H. Auden
Whatever the field under discussion, those who engage in debate must not only believe in each other's good faith, but also in their capacity to arrive at the truth.
W. H. Auden
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.
W. H. Auden
Those who will not reason, perish in the act. Those who will not act, perish for that reason.
W. H. Auden
A writer is a maker, not a man of action: his private life is of no concern to anybody but himself, his family and his friends.
W. H. Auden
No poet or novelist wishes he were the only one who ever lived, but most of them wish they were the only one alive, and quite a number fondly believe their wish has been granted.
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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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Time will say nothing but I told you so.
W. H. Auden
A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us.
W. H. Auden
A professor is someone who talks in someone else's sleep.
W. H. Auden
Intellectual disgrace Stares from every human face, And the seas of pity lie Locked and frozen in each eye.
W. H. Auden
The commonest ivory tower is that of the average man, the state of passivity towards experience.
W. H. Auden
August for the people and their favourite islands. Daily the steamers sidle up to meet The effusive welcome of the pier.
W. H. Auden
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.
W. H. Auden
America has always been a country of amateurs where the professional, that is to say, the man who claims authority as a member of an élite which knows the law in some field or other, is an object of distrust and resentment.
W. H. Auden
The friends who met here and embraced are gone, Each to his own mistake.
W. H. Auden
A poem is a verbal artifact which must be as skillfully and solidly constructed as a table or a motorcycle.
W. H. Auden
