{"author":"W.H. Auden","author_id":"W.H.+Auden","total_quotes":96,"quotes":[{"text":"And each in the cell of himself is almost convinced of his freedom.","author":"W.H. Auden","tags":["freedom","poetry"],"id":2203,"author_id":"W.H.+Auden"},{"text":"Without art, we should have no notion of the sacred; without science, we should always worship false gods.","author":"W.H. Auden","tags":["art","sacred","science","worship"],"id":3932,"author_id":"W.H.+Auden"},{"text":"Always the following wind of historyOf others' wisdom makes a buoyant airTill we come suddenly on pockets where Is nothing loud but us; where voices seemAbrupt, untrained, competing with no lieOur fathers shouted once.","author":"W.H. Auden","tags":["agon","creativity","patrimony"],"id":5473,"author_id":"W.H.+Auden"},{"text":"When words lose their meaning, physical force takes over.","author":"W.H. Auden","tags":["poetry","writing"],"id":11628,"author_id":"W.H.+Auden"},{"text":"In accepting and defending the social institution of slavery, the Greeks were harder-hearted than we but clearer-headed; they knew that labor as such is slavery, and that no man can feel a personal pride in being a laborer. A man can be proud of being a worker – someone, that is, who fabricates enduring objects, but in our society, the process of fabrication has been so rationalized in the interests of speed, economy and quantity that the part played by the individual factory employee has become too small for it to be meaningful to him as work, and practically all workers have been reduced to laborers. It is only natural, therefore, that the arts which cannot be rationalized in this way – the artist still remains personally responsible for what he makes – should fascinate those who, because they have no marked talent, are afraid, with good reason, that all they have to look forward to is a lifetime of meaningless labor. This fascination is not due to the nature of art itself, but to the way in which an artists works; he, and in our age, almost nobody else, is his own master. The idea of being one’s own master appeals to most human beings, and this is apt to lead to the fantastic hope that the capacity for artistic creation is universal, something nearly all human beings, by virtue, not by some special talent, but due to their humanity, could do if they tried.","author":"W.H. Auden","tags":["art","greeks","labor","slavery","work"],"id":13668,"author_id":"W.H.+Auden"},{"text":"I smell blood and an era of prominent madmen.","author":"W.H. Auden","tags":["absurd","life","writing"],"id":22966,"author_id":"W.H.+Auden"},{"text":"The religious definition of truth is not that it is universal but that it is absolute.","author":"W.H. Auden","tags":["truth","universal-vs-absolute"],"id":28221,"author_id":"W.H.+Auden"},{"text":"Christmas and Easter can be subjects for poetry, but Good Friday, like Auschwitz, cannot. The reality is so horrible it is not surprising that people should have found it a stumbling block to faith.","author":"W.H. Auden","tags":["auschwitz","christmas","crucifixion","easter","good-friday"],"id":28496,"author_id":"W.H.+Auden"},{"text":"Practical jokes are a demonstration that the distinction between seriousness and play is not a law of nature but a social convention which can be broken, and that a man does not always require a serious motive for deceiving another.Two men, dressed as city employees, block off a busy street and start digging it up. The traffic cop, motorists and pedestrians assume that this familiar scene has a practical explanation – a water main or an electric cable is being repaired – and make no attempt to use the street. In fact, however, the two diggers are private citizens in disguise who have no business there.All practical jokes are anti-social acts, but this does not necessarily mean that all practical jokes are immoral. A moral practical joke exposes some flaw of society which is hindrance to a real community or brotherhood. That it should be possible for two private individuals to dig up a street without being stopped is a just criticism of the impersonal life of a large city where most people are strangers to each other, not brothers; in a village where all inhabitants know each other personally, the deception would be impossible.","author":"W.H. Auden","tags":["practical-joker","society"],"id":34171,"author_id":"W.H.+Auden"},{"text":"The slogan of Hell: Eat or be eaten. The slogan of Heaven: Eat and be eaten.","author":"W.H. Auden","tags":["eating","heaven","hell"],"id":40716,"author_id":"W.H.+Auden"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":96,"pages":10,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}