W. H. Auden Quotes - Page 4

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• Some writers confuse authenticity, which they ought always to aim at, with originality, which they should never bother about.

  W. H. Auden

  Confusion, Confusing, Funny Basketball

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• A man is a form of life that dreams in order to act and acts in order to dream.

  W. H. Auden

  Dream, Men, Order

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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 masculine imagination lives in a state of perpetual revolt against the limitations of human life. In theological terms, one might say that all men, left to themselves, become gnostics. They may swagger like peacocks, but in their heart of hearts they all think sex an indignity and wish they could beget themselves on themselves. Hence the aggressive hostility toward women so manifest in most club-car stories.

  W. H. Auden

  Sex, Heart, Men

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• A poet is a professional maker of verbal objects.

  W. H. Auden

  Poetic, Poet, Makers

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• There must always be two kinds of art: escape-art, for man needs escape as he needs food and deep sleep, and parable-art, that art which shall teach man to unlearn hatred and learn love.

  W. H. Auden

  Art, Sleep, Men

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• There are good books which are only for adults. There are no good books which are only for children.

  W. H. Auden

  Children, Book, Adults

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• Great art is clear thinking about mixed feelings.

  W. H. Auden

  Art, Thinking, Feelings

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• In order that people may be happy in their work, these three things are needed: They must be fit for it: they must not do too much of it: and they must have a sense of success in it - not a doubtful sense, such as needs some testimony of others for its confirmation, but a sure sense, or rather knowledge, that so much work has been done well, and fruitfully done, whatever the world may say or think about it.

  W. H. Auden

  Success, Work, Thinking

  41 Copy quote

• In the eyes of others a man is a poet if he has written one good poem. In his own he is only a poet at the moment when he is making his last revision to a new poem. The moment before, he was still only a potential poet; the moment after, he is a man who has ceased to write poetry, perhaps forever.

  W. H. Auden

  Writing, Eye, Men

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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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• 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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• A person incapable of imaging another world than given to him by his senses would be subhuman, and a person who identifies his imaginary world with the world of sensory fact has become insane.

  W. H. Auden

  Insane, Facts, Would Be

  29 Copy quote

• All I have is a voice.

  W. H. Auden

  Voice

  Another Time (1940) "September 1, 1939"

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• Art is our chief means of breaking bread with the dead.

  W. H. Auden

  Art, Mean, Breaking Silence

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• What answer to the meaning of existence should one require beyond the right to exercise one's gifts?

  W. H. Auden

  Exercise, Answers, Should

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• A false enchantment can all too easily last a lifetime.

  W. H. Auden

  Love, Enchantment, Lasts

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• History is, strictly speaking, the study of questions; the study of answers belongs to anthropology and sociology.

  W. H. Auden

  History, Answers, Study

  37 Copy quote

• To choose what is difficult all one's days, as if it were easy, that is faith

  W. H. Auden

  Faith, Easy, Difficult

  W. H. Auden (2013). “For the Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio”, p.23, Princeton University Press

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• To pray is to pay attention to something or someone other than oneself. Whenever a man so concentrates his attention - on a landscape, a poem, a geometrical problem, an idol, or the True God - that he completely forgets his own ego and desires, he is praying. The primary task of the schoolteacher is to teach children, in a secular context, the technique of prayer.

  W. H. Auden

  God, Prayer, Children

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• 'Healing,' Papa would tell me, 'is not a science, but the intuitive art of wooing nature.'

  W. H. Auden

  Art, Nature, Get Well

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• All wishes, whatever their apparent content, have the same and unvarying meaning: "I refuse to be what I am."

  W. H. Auden

  Wish, Refuse

  "The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays" by W. H. Auden, ("Interlude: West's Disease"), (p. 241), 1962.

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• A doctor, like anyone else who has to deal with human beings, each of them unique, cannot be a scientist; he is either, like the surgeon, a craftsman, or, like the physician and the psychologist, an artist. This means that in order to be a good doctor a man must also have a good character, that is to say, whatever weaknesses and foibles he may have, he must love his fellow human beings in the concrete and desire their good before his own.

  W. H. Auden

  Love, Character, Mean

  70 Copy quote

• 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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• 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

  Believe, Fields, Debate

  "Forewords and Afterwords" by W. H. Auden, ("The Protestant Mystics"), (p. 52), 1973.

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