Auden Health is the state about which medicine has nothing to say. Auden Every American poet feels that the whole responsibility for contemporary poetry has fallen upon his shoulders, that he is a literary aristocracy of one. Auden Death is the sound of distant thunder at a picnic. In both cases, a man is responsible for his choice and must accept the consequences, whatever they may be. 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. Auden 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. Auden Art is our chief means of breaking bread with the dead. Auden 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. Auden 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. Auden All works of art are commissioned in the sense that no artist can create one by a simple act of will but must wait until what he believes to be a good idea for a work comes to him. Music is immediate, it goes on to become. Auden A verbal art like poetry is reflective it stops to think. Auden A professor is someone who talks in someone else's sleep.

Auden A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.

'Healing,' Papa would tell me, 'is not a science, but the intuitive art of wooing nature.' W.

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