When one has great gifts, what answer to the meaning of existence should one require beyond the right to exercise them.
More Quotes from W. H. Auden:
This great society is going smash; They cannot fool us with how fast they go, How much they cost each other and the gods; A culture is no better than its woods.W. H. Auden
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
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
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
If time were the wicked sheriff in a horse opera, I'd pay for riding lessons and take his gun away.
W. H. Auden
If music in general is an imitation of history, opera in particular is an imitation of human willfulness it is rooted in the fact that we not only have feelings but insist upon having them at whatever cost to ourselves. . .
W. H. Auden
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Unlike the expressionists, I have never been interested in renewing the world through the vehicle of art.
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Romance, like the rabbit at the dog track, is the elusive, fake, and never attained reward which, for the benefit and amusement of our masters, keeps us running and thinking in safe circles.
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