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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. "

W. H. Auden

Ignore

Action

Choice

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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. "

" The countenances of children, like those of animals, are masks, not faces, for they have not yet developed a significant profile of their own. "

" 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. "

W. H. Auden

Sad

Writing

" A poet can write about a man slaying a dragon, but not about a man pushing a button that releases a bomb. "

" 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. "

" A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language. "

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

" No good opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible. "

" Of all possible subjects, travel is the most difficult for an artist, as it is the easiest for a journalist. "

" Perhaps there is only one cardinal sin: impatience. Because of impatience we were driven out of Paradise, because of impatience we cannot return. "

" Sob, heavy world Sob as you spin, Mantled in mist Remote from the happy. "

" 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? "

W. H. Auden

Difficult

God

" Every American poet feels that the whole responsibility for contemporary poetry has fallen upon his shoulders, that he is a literary aristocracy of one. "

" 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. "

" A professor is someone who talks in someone else's sleep. "

" All works of art are commissioned in the sense that no artist can create one by a simple act of will but must wait until what he believes to be a good idea for a work comes to him. "

" Thousands have lived without love, not one without water. "

" You know there are no secrets in America. It's quite different in England, where people think of a secret as a shared relation between two people. "

" 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. "

" All that we are not stares back at what we are. "

W. H. Auden

Back

" The center that I cannot find is known to my unconscious mind. "

" Good can imagine Evil; but Evil cannot imagine Good. "

" 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. "

W. H. Auden

I Can

Love

" In times of joy, all of us wished we possessed a tail we could wag. "

W. H. Auden

Times

Joy

" 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. "

" Music can be made anywhere, is invisible and does not smell. "

" I don't get acting jobs because of my looks. "

" You owe it to all of us all get on with what you're good at. "

W. H. Auden

You

Owe