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" One cannot walk through an assembly factory and not feel that one is in Hell. "
W. H. Auden
Walk
Factory
Feel
Related Quotes:
" No human being is innocent, but there is a class of innocent human actions called Games. "
W. H. Auden
Games
Human
Innocent
" 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. "
W. H. Auden
Poetry
People
Experience
" 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. "
W. H. Auden
Doing
America
Easy
" Murder is unique in that it abolishes the party it injures, so that society has to take the place of the victim and on his behalf demand atonement or grant forgiveness; it is the one crime in which society has a direct interest. "
W. H. Auden
Society
Forgiveness
Place
" 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. "
W. H. Auden
Most
Believe
Double
" 'Healing,' Papa would tell me, 'is not a science, but the intuitive art of wooing nature.' "
W. H. Auden
Art
Tell
Science
" 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. "
W. H. Auden
Art
Media
New
" 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. "
W. H. Auden
People
Short
Good
" All that we are not stares back at what we are. "
W. H. Auden
Back
" Good can imagine Evil; but Evil cannot imagine Good. "
W. H. Auden
Evil
Good
Imagine
" 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
More
Sad
Writing
" My face looks like a wedding-cake left out in the rain. "
W. H. Auden
Rain
Left
Like
" 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. "
W. H. Auden
Bored
Eye
Unexpected
" 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. "
W. H. Auden
Happen
Money
Race
" 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. "
W. H. Auden
Company
Drawing
Feel
" God bless the USA, so large, so friendly, and so rich. "
W. H. Auden
Bless
God
God Bless
" 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. "
W. H. Auden
Interesting
Time
Happy
" A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language. "
W. H. Auden
Love
Person
Poet
" 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
Me
" Between friends differences in taste or opinion are irritating in direct proportion to their triviality. "
W. H. Auden
Friends
Differences
Opinion
" 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. "
W. H. Auden
Love
Mountain
River
" No poet or novelist wishes he were the only one who ever lived, but most of them wish they were the only one alive, and quite a number fondly believe their wish has been granted. "
W. H. Auden
Wishes
Wish
Lived
" Evil is unspectacular and always human, and shares our bed and eats at our own table. "
W. H. Auden
Table
Always
Bed
" A poet is a professional maker of verbal objects. "
W. H. Auden
Objects
Maker
Poet
" All sins tend to be addictive, and the terminal point of addiction is damnation. "
W. H. Auden
Addiction
Point
Sins
" Geniuses are the luckiest of mortals because what they must do is the same as what they most want to do. "
W. H. Auden
Must
Want
Same
" Sob, heavy world Sob as you spin, Mantled in mist Remote from the happy. "
W. H. Auden
Mist
Happy
Heavy
" Death is the sound of distant thunder at a picnic. "
W. H. Auden
Picnic
Sound
Death
" 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
" If time were the wicked sheriff in a horse opera, I'd pay for riding lessons and take his gun away. "
W. H. Auden
Gun
Time
Wicked