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Death is the sound of distant thunder at a picnic.

W. H. Auden

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W. H. Auden
Age: 66 †
Born: 1907
Born: February 21
Died: 1973
Died: September 28
Author
Composer
Essayist
Librettist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Playwright
Poet
Screenwriter
University Teacher
Writer
Jórvík
Wystan Hugh Auden
Wystan Auden
Wystan H Auden
W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
Philosophical
Sound
Death
Picnic
Picnics
Thunder
Distant

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But he would have us most of all remember to be enthusiastic over the night. Not only for the sense of wonder it alone has to offer but also because it needs our love. For with sad eyes its delectable creatures look up and beg us dumbly to ask them to follow. They are exiles who long for a future that lies in our power.
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No hero is mortal till he dies.
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Fame often makes a writer vain, but seldom makes him proud.
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Rhymes, meters, stanza forms, etc., are like servants. If the master is fair enough to win their affection and firm enough to command their respect, the result is an orderly happy household. If he is too tyrannical, they give notice if he lacks authority, they become slovenly, impertinent, drunk and dishonest.
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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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The eye likes novelty, but the ear craves familiarity.
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Every American poet feels that the whole responsibility for contemporary poetry has fallen upon his shoulders, that he is a literary aristocracy of one.
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Drama began as the act of a whole community. Ideally, there would be no speculators. In practice, every member of the audience should feel like an understudy.
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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.
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A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us.
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The ear tends to be lazy, craves the familiar and is shocked by the unexpected the eye, on the other hand, tends to be impatient, craves the novel and is bored by repetition.
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Sob, heavy world Sob as you spin, Mantled in mist Remote from the happy.
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Detective stories have nothing to do with works of art.
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The most important truths are likely to be those which society at that time least wants to hear.
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God bless the USA, so large, so friendly, and so rich.
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From beginning to end Wilde performed his life and continued to do so even after fame had taken the plot out of his own hands.
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An honest self-portrait is extremely rare because a man who has reached the degree of self-consciousness presupposed by the desire to paint his own portrait has almost always also developed an ego-consciousness which paints himself painting himself, and introduces artificial highlights and dramatic shadows.
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For time is inches And the heart's changes, Where ghost has haunted Lost and wanted.
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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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Before people complain of the obscurity of modern poetry, they should first examine their consciences and ask themselves with how many people and on how many occasions they have genuinely and profoundly shared some experience with another...
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