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" We all have these places where shy humiliations gambol on sunny afternoons. "
W. H. Auden
Where
Sunny
Shy
Related Quotes:
" A verbal art like poetry is reflective; it stops to think. Music is immediate, it goes on to become. "
W. H. Auden
Poetry
Music
Think
" 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
" Art is our chief means of breaking bread with the dead. "
W. H. Auden
Breaking
Our
Dead
" Between friends differences in taste or opinion are irritating in direct proportion to their triviality. "
W. H. Auden
Friends
Differences
Opinion
" No human being is innocent, but there is a class of innocent human actions called Games. "
W. H. Auden
Games
Human
Innocent
" The center that I cannot find is known to my unconscious mind. "
W. H. Auden
Known
Find
Cannot
" Health is the state about which medicine has nothing to say. "
W. H. Auden
Say
Which
Health
" 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. "
W. H. Auden
Know
America
You
" Perhaps there is only one cardinal sin: impatience. Because of impatience we were driven out of Paradise, because of impatience we cannot return. "
W. H. Auden
Driven
Sin
Only
" Every American poet feels that the whole responsibility for contemporary poetry has fallen upon his shoulders, that he is a literary aristocracy of one. "
W. H. Auden
Responsibility
Poet
American
" To save your world you asked this man to die; would this man, could he see you now, ask why? "
W. H. Auden
See
World
You
" No good opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible. "
W. H. Auden
Good
Feeling
Plot
" Murder is commoner among cooks than among members of any other profession. "
W. H. Auden
Other
Than
Cooks
" 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
" Good can imagine Evil; but Evil cannot imagine Good. "
W. H. Auden
Evil
Good
Imagine
" Evil is unspectacular and always human, and shares our bed and eats at our own table. "
W. H. Auden
Table
Always
Bed
" I don't get acting jobs because of my looks. "
W. H. Auden
Jobs
Because
Get
" Death is the sound of distant thunder at a picnic. "
W. H. Auden
Picnic
Sound
Death
" 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
Us
" 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
" 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
" 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. "
W. H. Auden
Company
Feel
Mistake
" 'Healing,' Papa would tell me, 'is not a science, but the intuitive art of wooing nature.' "
W. H. Auden
Art
Tell
Science
" Some writers confuse authenticity, which they ought always to aim at, with originality, which they should never bother about. "
W. H. Auden
Never
Aim
Always
" Fame often makes a writer vain, but seldom makes him proud. "
W. H. Auden
Makes
Him
Vain
" 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
" My face looks like a wedding-cake left out in the rain. "
W. H. Auden
Rain
Left
Like
" 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
" No hero is mortal till he dies. "
W. H. Auden
He
Dies
Hero