A poet's hope to be, like some valley cheese, local, but prized elsewhere.
More Quotes from Wystan Hugh Auden:
The Old Masters. About suffering they were never wrong.Wystan Hugh Auden
We are not commanded (or forbidden) to love our mates, our children, our friends, our country because such affections come naturally to us and are good in themselves, although we may corrupt them. We are commanded to love our neighbor because our ''natural'' attitude toward the ''other'' is one of either indifference or hostility.
Wystan Hugh Auden
If the most significant characteristic of man is the complex of biological needs he shares with all members of his species, then the best lives for the writer to observe are those in which the role of natural necessity is clearest, namely, the lives of the very poor.
Wystan Hugh Auden
As a poet there is only one political duty, and that is to defend one's language against corruption. When it is corrupted, people lose faith in what they hear and this leads to violence.
Wystan Hugh Auden
What all schoolchildren learn those to whom evil is done do evil in return.
Wystan Hugh Auden
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