A Quote by W. H. Auden

It's better to say, 'I'm suffering,' than to say, 'This landscape is ugly. — © W. H. Auden
It's better to say, 'I'm suffering,' than to say, 'This landscape is ugly.
We have to endure the discordance between imagination and fact. It is better to say, “I am suffering,” than to say, “This landscape is ugly.
A pretty girl is better than a plain one. A leg is better than an arm. A bedroom is better than a living room. An arrival is better that a departure. A birth is better than a death. A chase is better than a chat. A dog is better than a landscape. A kitten is better than a dog. A baby is better than a kitten. A kiss is better than a baby. A pratfall is better than anything.
People say, 'Burt Reynolds is so good-looking.'... I used to set him up for bait. I'd send him to the student union, and he'd come back with a beautiful girl and an ugly one. But his ugly girls were better than anything I'd get on my own. With his looks and my car, we'd kill 'em in Tallahassee.
It's better to say too much, than never to say what you need to say again.
If you travel to the States... they have a lot of different words than like what we use. For instance: they say 'elevator', we say 'lift'; they say 'drapes', we say 'curtains'; they say 'president', we say 'seriously deranged git.'
Writers displace their anxiety on to the tools of the trade. It's better to say that you haven't got the right pencil than to say you can't write, or to blame your computer for losing your chapter than face up to your feeling that it's better lost.
You're made to feel ugly, and I made ugly beautiful. Just by sheer persistence. Nobody has the right to say that I am ugly, and I will not be a professional victim, you know. Sorry!
My husband is my most ruthless critic... sometimes he will say, 'It's been said better before.' Of course it has. It's all been said better before. If I thought I had to say it better than anybody else, I'd never start. Better or worse is immaterial. The thing is that it has to be said; by me; ontologically. We each have to say it, to say it our own way. Not of our own will, but as it comes out through us. Good or bad, great or little: that isn't what human creation is about. It is that we have to try; to put it down in pigment, or words, or musical notations, or we die.
Beautiful speech doesn't need protection, it's ugly speech that needs protection. We have these cultural norms that allow people to say really ugly things. You don't have to invite them to your dinner party, but you should let them say it.
Sometimes you can tell a wise person not only by what he says but also by what he doesn't say. Remember, it is much better to say little than to say too much and regret it later.
Who's to say that my light is better than your darkness? Who's to say death is better than your darkness? Who am I to say?
I have more to say than Hemingway, and God knows, I say it better than Faulkner.
The great crime which the moneyed classes and promoters of industry committed in the palmy Victorian days was the condemning of the workers to ugliness, ugliness, ugliness: meanness and formless and ugly surroundings, ugly ideals, ugly religion, ugly hope, ugly love, ugly clothes, ugly furniture, ugly houses, ugly relationship between workers and employers. The human soul needs actual beauty more than bread.
Sometimes, I get so annoyed when other people brag. And sometimes, I know that I'm better than that or I've got something better in the works; I don't say anything. I just say, 'Really? That's great.'
Some people say I'm really ugly and anorexic; some say the only reason I'm on TV is because I'm pretty. I say to them: Get your slander straight. You are what you are, whether you're small or skinny or smart or dumb. Just do what you do.
Say what you have to say, not what you ought. Any truth is better than make-believe.
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