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Murder is unique in that it abolishes the party it injures, so that society has to take the place of the victim and on his behalf demand atonement or grant forgiveness it is the one crime in which society has a direct interest.
W. H. Auden
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W. H. Auden
Age: 66 †
Born: 1907
Born: February 21
Died: 1973
Died: September 28
Author
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Jórvík
Wystan Hugh Auden
Wystan Auden
Wystan H Auden
W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
Unique
Abolish
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Grant
Crime
Behalf
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Grants
Interest
Forgiveness
Society
Murder
Abolishes
Place
Victim
Injures
Take
Demand
Atonement
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One cannot review a bad book without showing off.
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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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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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I used to try and concentrate the poem so much that there wasn't a word that wasn't essential. This leads to becoming boring and constipated.
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Poetry is the only art people haven't learned to consume like soup.
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Criticism should be a casual conversation.
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Left to itself the masculine imagination has very little appreciation for the here and now it prefers to dwell on what is absent, on what has been or may be. If men are more punctual than women, it is because they know that, without the external discipline of clock time, they would never get anything done.
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The relation of faith between subject and object is unique in every case. Hundreds may believe, but each has to believe by himself.
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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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As a poet, there is only one political duty, and that is to defend one's language from corruption.
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When one looks into the window of a store which sells devotional art objects, one can't help wishing the iconoclasts had won.
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Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can: all of them make me laugh.
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In the deserts of the heart Let the healing fountain start.
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One can only blaspheme if one believes.
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Who on earth invented the silly convention that it is boring or impolite to talk shop? Nothing is more interesting to listen to, especially if the shop is not one's own.
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Art is born of humiliation.
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Music can be made anywhere, is invisible and does not smell.
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The older lives like not to be stood in rows or at right angles.
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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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In a game, just losing is almost as satisfying as just winning... In life the loser's score is always zero.
W. H. Auden
