W. H. Auden Quotes - Page 6

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• I will love you forever" swears the poet. I find this easy to swear too. "I will love you at 4:15 pm next Tuesday" - Is that still as easy?

  W. H. Auden

  Love You, Pms, Tuesday

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• A poet, qua poet, has only one political duty, namely, in his own writing to set an example of the correct use of his mother tongue, which is always being corrupted. When words lose their meaning, physical force takes over.

  W. H. Auden

  Mother, Writing, Political

  "Paris Review", Writers at Work, 4th series, (p. 251), 1972.

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• Human language is mythological and metaphorical by nature.

  W. H. Auden

  Language, Metaphorical, Humans

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• Great art is clear thinking about mixed feelings.

  W. H. Auden

  Art, Thinking, Feelings

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• The way to read a fairy tale is to throw yourself in.

  W. H. Auden

  Angel, Way, Fairytale

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• Aphorisms are essentially an aristocratic genre of writing. The aphorist does not argue or explain, he asserts; and implicit in his assertion is a conviction that he is wiser and more intelligent than his readers.

  W. H. Auden

  Writing, Intelligent, Doe

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• Drama is based on the Mistake. I think someone is my friend when he really is my enemy, that I am free to marry a woman when in fact she is my mother, that this person is a chambermaid when it is a young nobleman in disguise, that this well-dressed young man is rich when he is really a penniless adventurer, or that if I do this such and such a result will follow when in fact it results in something very different. All good drama has two movements, first the making of the mistake, then the discovery that it was a mistake.

  W. H. Auden

  Mother, Mistake, Drama

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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.

  W. H. Auden

  Poet, Said, Reader

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• Every high C accurately struck demolishes the theory that we are the irresponsible puppets of fate or chance.

  W. H. Auden

  Fate, Puppets, Chance

  "Notes on Music and Opera". Essay by W. H. Auden, published in his book "The Dyer's Hand" (p. 471), 1963.

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• The slogan of Hell: Eat or be eaten. The slogan of Heaven: Eat and be eaten.

  W. H. Auden

  Heaven, Hell, Slogans

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• The theater has never been any good since the actors became gentlemen.

  W. H. Auden

  Gentleman, Acting, Actors

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• That the speech of self-disclosure should be translatable seems to me very odd, but I am convinced that it is. The conclusion that I draw is that the only quality which all human being without exception possess is uniqueness: any characteristic, on the other hand, which one individual can be recognized as having in common with another, like red hair or the English language, implies the existence of other individual qualities which this classification excludes.

  W. H. Auden

  Hair, Self, Hands

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• 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.

  W. H. Auden

  Love, Valentines Day, Rivers

  Another Time (1940) "As I Walked Out One Evening"

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• If the most significant characteristic of man is the complex of biological needs he shares with all members of his species, then the best lives for the writer to observe are those in which the role of natural necessity is clearest, namely, the lives of the very poor.

  W. H. Auden

  Art, Book, Men

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• Love each other or perish.

  W. H. Auden

  Helping Others, Love Each Other

  "Tuesdays with Morrie". Book by Mitch Albom, 1997.

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• A poet's hope: to be, like some valley cheese, local, but prized elsewhere.

  W. H. Auden

  Hope, Food, Cooking

  Collected Poems (1976) p. 639

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• Money is the necessity that frees us from necessity.

  W. H. Auden

  Money

  "Forewords and Afterwords" by W. H. Auden, ("A Poet of the Actual"), (p. 266), 1973.

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• 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

  Discovery, Wish, Important

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• Nobody knows what the cause is, though some pretend they do; it like some hidden assassin waiting to strike at you. Childless women get it, and men when they retire; it as if there had to be some outlet for their foiled creative fire.

  W. H. Auden

  Cancer, Men, Fire

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• We are lived by powers we pretend to understand.

  W. H. Auden

  "Reading between the lines" by Lachlan Mackinnon, www.theguardian.com. September 30, 2001.

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• 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

  Writing, Important, Age

  "Paris Review", Writers at Work, 4th series, (p. 250), 1972.

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• Our claim to our own bodies and our world is our catastrophe.

  W. H. Auden

  Our World, Body, Claims

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• We were put on this Earth to help others. Why others were put here is
  beyond me.

  W. H. Auden

  Helping Others, Earth, Helping

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• 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.

  W. H. Auden

  Life, Believe, Writing

  Dyer's Hand (1963) "Writing"

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• As biological organisms made of matter, we are subject to the laws of physics and biology: as conscious persons who create our own history we are free to decide what that history shall be. Without science, we should have no notion of equality; without art, no notion of liberty.

  W. H. Auden

  Art, Should Have, Law

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