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W. H. Auden Quotes

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“A doctor, like anyone else who has to deal with human beings, each of them unique, cannot be a scientist; he is either, like the surgeon, a craftsman, or, like the physician and the psychologist, an artist. This means that in order to be a good doctor a man must also have a good character, that is to say, whatever weaknesses and foibles he may have, he must love his fellow human beings in the concrete and desire their good before his own.”

MenLoveHumansMayMeanCharacterDesireArtistOrderHuman BeingsDealsUniqueWeaknessDoctorsScientistFellowsGoodConcretePhysiciansPsychologistSurgeonsCaring For OthersGood CharacterCraftsmanFoiblesIndividual DifferencesGood DoctorsDoctoring
Author:W. H. Auden
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“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. The quality common to all the great operatic roles, e.g., Don Giovanni, Norma, Lucia, Tristan, Isolde, Br?nnhilde, is that each of them is a passionate and willful state of being. In real life they would all be bores, even Don Giovanni.”

IfsHumansRealStatesFactsFeelingsCommonQualityRolesParticularCostPassionateReal LifeOperaRootedBoresImitationHuman WillWillfulness
Author:W. H. Auden
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“The belief that politics can be scientific must inevitably produce tyrannies. Politics cannot be a science, because in politics theory and practice cannot be separated, and the sciences depend upon their separation. Empirical politics must be kept in bounds by democratic institutions, which leave it up to the subjects of the experiment to say whether it shall be tried, and to stop it if they dislike it, because, in politics, there is a distinction, unknown to science, between Truth and Justice.”

IfsPoliticsBeliefJusticePracticeSubjectsProduceTheoryDependsPoliticianInstitutionsDemocraticBoundsSeparationExperimentsTyrannyDistinctionDislikeTruth And JusticeTheory And Practice
Author:W. H. Auden
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“To pray is to pay attention to something or someone other than oneself. Whenever a man so concentrates his attention - on a landscape, a poem, a geometrical problem, an idol, or the True God - that he completely forgets his own ego and desires, he is praying. The primary task of the schoolteacher is to teach children, in a secular context, the technique of prayer.”

MenChildrenGodProblemDesirePrayerForgetPayAttentionTeachPrayingEgoTasksOneselfTechniquePrimariesLandscapePay AttentionIdolsSecularTrue God
Author:W. H. Auden
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“But he would have us most of all remember to be enthusiastic over the night. Not only for the sense of wonder it alone has to offer but also because it needs our love. For with sad eyes its delectable creatures look up and beg us dumbly to ask them to follow. They are exiles who long for a future that lies in our power.”

NeedsLooksLongDreamEyeRememberLyingNightAsksWonderOffersCreaturesLook UpOur LoveExileEnthusiasticSense Of WonderDelectableSad Eyes
Author:W. H. Auden
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“Drama is based on the Mistake. I think someone is my friend when he really is my enemy, that I am free to marry a woman when in fact she is my mother, that this person is a chambermaid when it is a young nobleman in disguise, that this well-dressed young man is rich when he is really a penniless adventurer, or that if I do this such and such a result will follow when in fact it results in something very different. All good drama has two movements, first the making of the mistake, then the discovery that it was a mistake.”

IfsThinkingMenFirstsWellsPersonsTwoDifferentFactsYoungMotherResultsMistakeEnemyRichMovementDramaDiscoveryMy FriendsTheaterTheatreYoung ManDisguiseAdventurerWell DressedNoblemenGood Drama
Author:W. H. Auden
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“You need not see what someone is doing to know if it is his vocation, you have only to watch his eyes: a cook mixing a sauce, a surgeon making a primary incision, a clerk completing a bill of lading wear the same rapt expression, forgetting themselves in a function. How beautiful it is, that eye-on-the-obje ct look.”

IfsKnowsNeedsLooksEyeBeautifulForgetWatchesExpressionFunctionBillsPrimariesCooksHis EyesVocationSurgeonsSauceMixingClerksCompleting
Author:W. H. Auden
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