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Music is the best means we have of digesting time.

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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More quotes by W. H. Auden

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There are bills to be paid, machines to keep in repair, Irregular verbs to learn, the Time Being to redeem From insignificance.
W. H. Auden
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Laziness acknowledges the relation of the present to the past but ignores its relation to the future impatience acknowledge its relation to the future but ignores its relation to the past neither the lazy nor the impatient man, that is, accepts the present instant in its full reality and so cannot love his neighbour completely.
W. H. Auden
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The way to read a fairy tale is to throw yourself in.
W. H. Auden
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The element of craftsmanship in poetry is obscured by the fact that all men are taught to speak and most to read and write, while very few men are taught to draw or paint or write music.
W. H. Auden
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We are not commanded (or forbidden) to love our mates, our children, our friends, our country because such affections come naturally to us and are good in themselves, although we may corrupt them. We are commanded to love our neighbor because our natural attitude toward the other is one of either indifference or hostility.
W. H. Auden
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No poet or novelist wishes he were the only one who ever lived, but most of them wish they were the only one alive, and quite a number fondly believe their wish has been granted.
W. H. Auden
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I'll love you till the ocean Is folded and hung up to dry And the seven stars go squawking Like geese about the sky.
W. H. Auden
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O plunge your hands in water, Plunge them in up to the wrist Stare, stare in the basin And wonder what you've missed.
W. H. Auden
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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.
W. H. Auden
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A small grove massacred to the last ash, An oak with heart-rot, give away the show: This great society is going to smash They cannot fool us with how fast they go, How much they cost each other and the gods. A culture is no better than its woods.
W. H. Auden
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Proper names are poetry in the raw. Like all poetry they are untranslatable.
W. H. Auden
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Every high C accurately struck demolishes the theory that we are the irresponsible puppets of fate or chance.
W. H. Auden
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I smell blood and an era of prominent madmen.
W. H. Auden
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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.
W. H. Auden
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Of course, Behaviourism 'works'. So does torture. Give me a no-nonsense, down-to-earth behaviourist, a few drugs, and simple electrical appliances, and in six months I will have him reciting the Athanasian Creed in public.
W. H. Auden
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Good can imagine Evil but Evil cannot imagine Good.
W. H. Auden
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Perhaps there is only one cardinal sin: impatience. Because of impatience we were driven out of Paradise, because of impatience we cannot return.
W. H. Auden
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We are all here on earth to help others.
W. H. Auden
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To ask the hard question is simple.
W. H. Auden
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My deepest feeling about politicians is that they are dangerous lunatics to be avoided when possible and carefully humored people, above all, to whom one must never tell the truth.
W. H. Auden