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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
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
Direct
Grant
Crime
Behalf
Party
Grants
Interest
Forgiveness
Society
Murder
Abolishes
Place
Victim
Injures
Take
Demand
Atonement
Unique
Abolish

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Time and fevers burn away Individual beauty from Thoughtful children, and the grave Proves the child ephemeral
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All sins tend to be addictive, and the terminal point of addiction is damnation.
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If the most significant characteristic of man is the complex of biological needs he shares with all members of his species, then the best lives for the writer to observe are those in which the role of natural necessity is clearest, namely, the lives of the very poor.
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Long ago the accusations had begun, And suddenly knew by whom it had been judged
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Yet no one hears his own remarks as prose.
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The countenances of children, like those of animals, are masks, not faces, for they have not yet developed a significant profile of their own.
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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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Pleasure is by no means an infallible critical guide, but it is the least fallible.
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