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If time were the wicked sheriff in a horse opera, I'd pay for riding lessons and take his gun away.

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
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University Teacher
Writer
Jórvík
Wystan Hugh Auden
Wystan Auden
Wystan H Auden
W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
Horse
Lessons
Pay
Sheriff
Away
Sheriffs
Take
Opera
Time
Riding
Wicked
Gun

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a culture is no better than its woods
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Shall memory restore The steps and the shore, The face and the meeting place.
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August for the people and their favourite islands. Daily the steamers sidle up to meet The effusive welcome of the pier.
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The sky is darkening like a stain Something is going to fall like rain And it won't be flowers
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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.
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I think the first prerequisite to civilization is an ability to make polite conversation.
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I'll love you, dear, I'll love you till China and Africa meet and the river jumps over the mountain and the salmon sing in the street.
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So long as we think of it objectively, time is Fate or Chance, the factor in our lives for which we are not responsible, and about which we can do nothing but when we begin to think of it subjectively, we feel responsible for our time, and the notion of punctuality arises.
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Great art is clear thinking about mixed feelings.
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Dogmatic theological statements are neither logical propositions nor poetic utterances. They are ''shaggy dog'' stories they have a point, but he who tries too hard to get it will miss it.
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the child unlucky in his little State, Some hearth where freedom is excluded, A hive whose honey is fear and worry, Feels calmer now and somehow assured of escape
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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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To hunt for symbols in a fairy tale is absolutely fatal.
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To ask the hard question is simple.
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Yet no one hears his own remarks as prose.
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My face looks like a wedding-cake left out in the rain.
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Long ago the accusations had begun, And suddenly knew by whom it had been judged
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Precisely because we do not communicate by singing, a song can be out of place but not out of character it is just as credible that a stupid person should sing beautifully as that a clever person should do so.
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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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