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All good art is in the nature of a letter written to amuse a sick friend. Too much art, particularly in our time, is only a letter written to oneself.
W. H. Auden
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W. H. Auden
Age: 66 †
Born: 1907
Born: February 21
Died: 1973
Died: September 28
Author
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Literary Historian
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University Teacher
Writer
Jórvík
Wystan Hugh Auden
Wystan Auden
Wystan H Auden
W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
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Art
Amuse
Nature
Letter
Much
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Good
Letters
Time
Oneself
Sick
Friend
More quotes by W. H. Auden
Without communication with the dead, a fully human life is not possible.
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To discover how to be human now is the reason we follow this star.
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No human being is innocent, but there is a class of innocent human actions called Games.
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Without Art, we should have no notion of the sacred without Science, we should always worship false gods.
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A small grove massacred to the last ash, An oak with heart-rot, give away the show: This great society is going to smash They cannot fool us with how fast they go, How much they cost each other and the gods. A culture is no better than its woods.
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Political history is far too criminal to be a fit subject of study for the young. Children should acquire their heroes and villians from fiction.
W. H. Auden
All I have is a voice.
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Weep for the lives your wishes never led.
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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.
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In times of joy, all of us wished we possessed a tail we could wag.
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All I have is a voice to undo the folded lie, the romantic lie in the brain of the sensual man-in-the-street and the lie of Authority whose buildings grope the sky: There is no such thing as the State and no one exists alone Hunger allows no choice to the citizen or the police We must love one another or die.
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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.
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All the literati keep An imaginary friend.
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.
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Yet no one hears his own remarks as prose.
W. H. Auden
Money cannot buy the fuel of love but is excellent kindling.
W. H. Auden
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
W. H. Auden
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.
W. H. Auden
If we really want to live, we'd better start at once to try.
W. H. Auden
Dance, dance, dance till you drop.
W. H. Auden
