"A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language."
-W. H. Auden
PoetryView Quote
"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
posted in Experience
Other Quotes by W. H. Auden
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"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
SocietyView Quote
"Almost all of our relationships begin and most of them continue as forms of mutual exploitation, a mental or physical barter, to be terminated when one or both parties run out of goods."
-W. H. Auden
RelationshipView Quote
"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
PoetryView Quote
"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
LoveView Quote
"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
LifeView Quote
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"Life can only be understood backwards but it must be lived forwards."
-Soren Kierkegaard
ExperienceView Quote
"We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them."
-Khalil Gibran
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"The soul should always stand ajar, ready to welcome the ecstatic experience."
-Emily Dickinson
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"Do you know the difference between education and experience? Education is when you read the fine print experience is what you get when you don't."
-Pete Seeger
ExperienceView Quote
"Talking with you is sort of the conversational equivalent of an out of body experience."
-Bill Watterson
ExperienceView Quote
"Experience teaches us that it is much easier to prevent an enemy from posting themselves than it is to dislodge them after they have got possession."
-George Washington
ExperienceView Quote