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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
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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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Follow, poet, follow right To the bottom of the night, With your unconstraining voice Still persuade us to rejoice With the farming of a verse Make a vineyard of the curse, Sing of human unsuccess In a rapture of distress In the deserts of the heart Let the healing fountain start, In the prison of his days Teach the free man how to praise.
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Aside from purely technical analysis, nothing can be said about music, except when it is bad when it is good, one can only listen and be grateful.
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Health is the state about which medicine has nothing to say.
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a culture is no better than its woods
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Politics cannot be a science, because in politics theory and practice cannot be separated, and the sciences depend upon their separation.
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Though one cannot always Remember exactly why one has been happy, There is no forgetting that one was.
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A poet must never make a statement simply because it is sounds poetically exciting he must also believe it to be true.
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The class distinctions proper to a democratic society are not those of rank or money, still less, as is apt to happen when these are abandoned, of race, but of age.
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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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Water is the soul of the Earth.
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Every autobiography is concerned with two characters, a Don Quixote, the Ego, and a Sancho Panza, the Self.
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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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Anyone who has a child today should train him to be either a physicist or a ballet dancer. Then he'll escape.
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Music can be made anywhere, is invisible and does not smell.
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To have a sense of sin means to feel guilty at there being an ethical choice to make, a guilt which, however good I may become, remains unchanged.
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Recipe for the upbringing of a poet: 'As much neurosis as the child can bear.
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Evil is unspectacular and always human, and shares our bed and eats at our own table.
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The only reason the Protestants and Catholics have given up the idea of universal domination is because they've realised they can't get away with it.
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A poet, qua poet, has only one political duty, namely, in his own writing to set an example of the correct use of his mother tongue, which is always being corrupted. When words lose their meaning, physical force takes over.
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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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