W.H. Auden
Poet
1907-02-21
Quotes by W.H. Auden
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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.
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Now is the age of anxiety.
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Sob, heavy world Sob as you spin, Mantled in mist Remote from the happy.
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History is, strictly speaking, the study of questions; the study of answers belongs to anthropology and sociology.
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Of all possible subjects, travel is the most difficult for an artist, as it is the easiest for a journalist.
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We all have these places where shy humiliations gambol on sunny afternoons.
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A professor is someone who talks in someone else's sleep.
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All sins tend to be addictive, and the terminal point of addiction is damnation.
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Hemingway is terribly limited. His technique is good for short stories, for people who meet once in a bar very late at night, but do not enter into relations. But not for the novel.
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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.
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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.
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A poet is a professional maker of verbal objects.
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Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.
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In times of joy, all of us wished we possessed a tail we could wag.
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Some writers confuse authenticity, which they ought always to aim at, with originality, which they should never bother about.
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A professor is one who talks in someone else's sleep.
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Pleasure is by no means an infallible critical guide, but it is the least fallible.
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Some books are undeservedly forgotten; none are undeservedly remembered.
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One cannot review a bad book without showing off.
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A man has his distinctive personal scent which his wife, his children and his dog can recognize. A crowd has a generalized stink. The public is odorless.
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