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"45 W. H. Auden Quotes & Sayings

      British     /     View profile
Born: 21 February 1907. Died: 29 September 1973 | Poet |

We must love one another or die

Love One Die We
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Of all possible subjects, travel is the most difficult for an artist, as it is the easiest for a journalist.

Artist Difficult Easiest Journalist
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When I find myself in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a room full of dukes.

Mistake Room Company Feel
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What the mass media offers is not popular art, but entertainment which is intended to be consumed like food, forgotten, and replaced by a new dish.

Food Art Consumed Dish
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Choice of attention - to pay attention to this and ignore that - is to the inner life what choice of action is to the outer. In both cases, a man is responsible for his choice and must accept the consequences, whatever they may be.

Choice Life Accept Action
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For who can bear to feel himself forgotten?

Bear Feel Forgotten Himself
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No good opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible.

Feeling Good Opera People
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A professor is someone who talks in someone else's sleep.

Sleep Lse Someone Talk
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Almost all of our relationships begin and most of them continue as forms of mutual exploitation, a mental or physical barter, to be terminated when one or both parties run out of goods.

Physical Begin Continue Mental
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Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can: all of them make me laugh.

Love Admire Laugh Common
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Some books are undeservedly forgotten; none are undeservedly remembered.

Books Forgotten None Remembered
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Some writers confuse authenticity, which they ought always to aim at, with originality, which they should never bother about.

Originality Confuse Never Aim
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A tremendous number of people in America work very hard at something that bores them. Even a rich man thinks he has to go down to the office everyday. Not because he likes it but because he can't think of anything else to do.

Bores Rich Down Office
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Geniuses are the luckiest of mortals because what they must do is the same as what they most want to do.

Mortals Same Because Geniuses
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A verbal art like poetry is reflective; it stops to think. Music is immediate, it goes on to become.

Verbal Music Art Become
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In relation to a writer, most readers believe in the Double Standard: they may be unfaithful to him as often as they like, but he must never, never be unfaithful to them.

Believe Standard Double Often
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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.

Lazy Bored Familiar Craves
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Music is the best means we have of digesting time.
Best Means Music Time
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Music can be made anywhere, is invisible and does not smell.

Music Smell Anywhere Invisible
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We all have these places where shy humiliations gambol on sunny afternoons.

Afternoon Places Shy Sunny
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It's a sad fact about our culture that a poet can earn much more money writing or talking about his art than he can by practicing it.

Fact Writing Culture Art
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In a world of prayer, we are all equal in the sense that each of us is a unique person, with a unique perspective on the world, a member of a class of one.

World Unique Sense Class
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Death is the sound of distant thunder at a picnic.
Death Distant Picnic Sound
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Before people complain of the obscurity of modern poetry, they should first examine their consciences and ask themselves with how many people and on how many occasions they have genuinely and profoundly shared some experience with another.

Complain Genuinely Poetry First
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Art is our chief means of breaking bread with the dead.

Art Bread Breaking Chief
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A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.

Poet Love Person Before
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A poet is a professional maker of verbal objects.

Verbal Maker Objects Poet
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One cannot walk through an assembly factory and not feel that one is in Hell.

Walk Factory Assembly Feel
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Evil is unspectacular and always human, and shares our bed and eats at our own table.

Always Bed Eats Evil
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The class distinctions proper to a democratic society are not those of rank or money, still less, as is apt to happen when these are abandoned, of race, but of age.

Race Class Money Distinctions
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The words of a dead man are modified in the guts of the living.

Dead Guts Living Man
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No human being is innocent, but there is a class of innocent human actions called Games.

Actions Being Class Games
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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?

Considering Difficult Even Faith
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Like everything which is not the involuntary result of fleeting emotion but the creation of time and will, any marriage, happy or unhappy, is infinitely more interesting than any romance, however passionate.

Emotion Happy Romance Passionate
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The center that I cannot find is known to my unconscious mind.

Mind Center Known Find
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It's frightening how easy it is to commit murder in America. Just a drink too much. I can see myself doing it. In England, one feels all the social restraints holding one back. But here, anything can happen.

Easy Holding Feels Commit
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When I am in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a drawing room full of dukes.

Company Drawing Feel Full
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All sins tend to be addictive, and the terminal point of addiction is damnation.

Point Terminal Sins Tend
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Learn from your dreams what you lack.
Dreams Lack Learn You
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We are all here on earth to help others; what on earth the others are here for I don't know.

Earth Help Here Know
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A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us.

Book Read Real One
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Health is the state about which medicine has nothing to say.

Medicine State Health About
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Between friends differences in taste or opinion are irritating in direct proportion to their triviality.

Taste Irritating Direct Friends
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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.

Love Meet Sing Mountain
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Good can imagine Evil; but Evil cannot imagine Good.

Evil Good Cannot Imagine
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W. H. Auden Quotes & Sayings