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Like everything which is not the involuntary result of fleeting emotion but the creation of time and will, any marriage, happy or unhappy, is infinitely more interesting than any romance, however passionate.
W. H. Auden
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W. H. Auden
Age: 66 †
Born: 1907
Born: February 21
Died: 1973
Died: September 28
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Wystan Hugh Auden
Wystan Auden
Wystan H Auden
W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
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More quotes by W. H. Auden
Our claim to our own bodies and our world is our catastrophe.
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I smell blood and an era of prominent madmen.
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Our sufferings and weaknesses, in so far as they are personal, are of no literary interest whatsoever. They are only interesting in so far as we can see them as typical of the human condition.
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The lights must never go out, The music must always play
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I will love you forever swears the poet. I find this easy to swear too. I will love you at 4:15 pm next Tuesday - Is that still as easy?
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He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.
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Over the tea-cups and in the square the tongue has its desire Still waters run deep, my dear, there's never smoke without fire.
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What the poet says has never been said before, but, once he has said it, his readers recognize its validity for themselves.
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No being can make another one happy.
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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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I think the first prerequisite to civilization is an ability to make polite conversation.
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Intellectual disgrace Stares from every human face, And the seas of pity lie Locked and frozen in each eye.
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Literary confessors are contemptible, like beggars who exhibit their sores for money, but not so contemptible as the public that buys their books.
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Goodness is easier to recognize than to define.
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Happy the hare at morning, for she cannot read The hunter's waking thoughts.
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A poet feels the impulse to create a work of art when the passive awe provoked by an event is transformed into a desire to express that awe in a rite of worship.
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One cannot review a bad book without showing off.
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The nightingales are sobbing in The orchards of our mothers, And hearts that we broke long ago Have long been breaking others Tears are round, the sea is deep: Roll them overboard and sleep.
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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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To read is to translate, for no two persons' experiences are the same. A bad reader is like a bad translator: he interprets literally when he ought to paraphrase and paraphrases when he ought to interpret literally.
W. H. Auden
