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History is, strictly speaking, the study of questions the study of answers belongs to anthropology and sociology.

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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Wystan Hugh Auden
Wystan Auden
Wystan H Auden
W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
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Anthropology
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More quotes by W. H. Auden

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No hero is mortal till he dies.
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We honor founders of these starving cities, Whose honor is the image of our sorrow.
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By mourning tongues The death of the poet was kept from his poems.
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To my generation no other English poet seemed so perfectly to express the sensibility of a male adolescent. If I do not now turn to him very often, I am eternally grateful to him for the joy he gave me in my youth.
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Private faces in public places Are wiser and nicer Than public faces in private places.
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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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About suffering they were never wrong, The Old Masters How well they understood Its human position how it takes place While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along.
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A writer is a maker, not a man of action: his private life is of no concern to anybody but himself, his family and his friends.
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The condition of mankind is, and always has been, so miserable and depraved that, if anyone were to say to the poet: For God's sake stop singing and do something useful like putting on the kettle or fetching bandages, what just reason could he give for refusing?
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Lay your sleeping head, my love, Human on my faithless arm.
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Aphorisms are essentially an aristocratic genre of writing. The aphorist does not argue or explain, he asserts and implicit in his assertion is a conviction that he is wiser and more intelligent than his readers.
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Dance till the stars come down from the rafters Dance, Dance, Dance 'till you drop.
W. H. Auden
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Art is born of humiliation.
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Great art is clear thinking about mixed feelings.
W. H. Auden
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It's frightening how easy it is to commit murder in America. Just a drink too much. I can see myself doing it. In England, one feels all the social restraints holding one back. But here, anything can happen.
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What the mass media offers is not popular art, but entertainment which is intended to be consumed like food, forgotten, and replaced by a new dish.
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The commonest ivory tower is that of the average man, the state of passivity towards experience.
W. H. Auden
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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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In life the loser's score is always zero.
W. H. Auden
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About suffering they were never wrong, The Old Masters.
W. H. Auden