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If equal affection cannot be, let the more loving be me.

W. H. Auden

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W. H. Auden
Age: 66 †
Born: 1907
Born: February 21
Died: 1973
Died: September 28
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Literary Critic
Literary Historian
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Jórvík
Wystan Hugh Auden
Wystan Auden
Wystan H Auden
W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
Equal
Cannot
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Affection
Loving

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The definition of prayer is paying careful and concentrated attention to something other than your own constructions.
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A daydream is a meal at which images are eaten. Some of us are gourmets, some gourmands, and a good many take their images precooked out of a can and swallow them down whole, absent-mindedly and with little relish.
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Few people take an interest in Iceland, but in those few the interest is passionate.
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One of the most horrible, yet most important, discoveries of our age has been that, if you really wish to destroy a person and turn him into an automaton, the surest method is not physical torture, in the strict sense, but simply to keep him awake, i.e., in an existential relation to life without intermission.
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Into this neutral air Where blind skyscrapers use Their full height to proclaim The strength of Collective Man, Each language pours its vain Competitive excuse.
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Happy the hare at morning, for she cannot read The hunter's waking thoughts.
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There is a certain kind of person who is so dominated by the desire to be loved for himself alone that he has constantly to test those around him by tiresome behavior what he says and does must be admired, not because it is intrinsically admirable, but because it is his remark, his act. Does not this explain a good deal of avant-garde art?
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Courses in prosody, rhetoric and comparative philology would be required of all students, and every student would have to select three courses out of courses in mathematics, natural history, geology, meteorology, archaeology, mythology, liturgics, cooking.
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Proper names are poetry in the raw. Like all poetry they are untranslatable.
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Time will say nothing but I told you so, Time only knows the price we have to pay If I could tell you I would let you know.
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Dance, dance, dance till you drop.
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The relation of faith between subject and object is unique in every case. Hundreds may believe, but each has to believe by himself.
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The lights must never go out, The music must always play
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Literary confessors are contemptible, like beggars who exhibit their sores for money, but not so contemptible as the public that buys their books.
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The poet who writes free verse is like Robinson Crusoe on his desert island: he must do all his cooking, laundry and darning for himself. In a few exceptional cases, this manly independence produces something original and impressive, but more often the result is squalor - dirty sheets on the unmade bed and empty bottles on the unswept floor.
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Who on earth invented the silly convention that it is boring or impolite to talk shop? Nothing is more interesting to listen to, especially if the shop is not one's own.
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But once in a while the odd thing happens Once in a while the dream comes true And the whole pattern of life is altered Once in a while, the moon turns blue
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History is, strictly speaking, the study of questions the study of answers belongs to anthropology and sociology.
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The true men of action in our time, those who transform the world, are not the politicians and statesmen, but the scientists
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To choose what is difficult all one's days, as if it were easy, that is faith
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