W. H. Auden Quotes About Quality

Quotes about: Quality

• Some books are undeservedly forgotten; none are undeservedly remembered.

  W. H. Auden

  Book, Beer, Quality

  The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays pt. 1 (1962)

• If music in general is an imitation of history, opera in particular is an imitation of human willfulness; it is rooted in the fact that we not only have feelings but insist upon having them at whatever cost to ourselves. The quality common to all the great operatic roles, e.g., Don Giovanni, Norma, Lucia, Tristan, Isolde, Br?nnhilde, is that each of them is a passionate and willful state of being. In real life they would all be bores, even Don Giovanni.

  W. H. Auden

  Real, Feelings, Quality

• 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

• All poets adore explosions, thunderstorms, tornadoes, conflagrations, ruins, scenes of spectacular carnage. The poetic imagination is not at all a desirable quality in a statesman.

  W. H. Auden

  Leadership, Imagination, Quality

  "The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays". Book by W. H. Auden. Chapter: "The Poet and The City", p. 84, 1962.

• It's a pity I am so impatient and careless, as any ordinary person could learn all the techniques of photography in a week. It is the democratic art, i.e. technical skill is practically eliminated - the more foolproof cameras become with focusing and exposure gadgets the better - and artistic quality depends only on choice of subject.

  W. H. Auden

  Photography, Art, Skills

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