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A poet can write about a man slaying a dragon, but not about a man pushing a button that releases a bomb.

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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Literary Critic
Literary Historian
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Jórvík
Wystan Hugh Auden
Wystan Auden
Wystan H Auden
W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
Writing
Dragons
Men
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Slaying
Pushing
Releases
Release
Dragon
Poet
Button
Write
Bomb

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About suffering they were never wrong, The Old Masters.
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Human language is mythological and metaphorical by nature.
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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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I sit in one of the dives On Fifty-second Street Uncertain and afraid As the clever hopes expire Of a low dishonest decade
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We must love one another or die
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The poet marries the language, and out of this marriage the poem is born.
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One of the most horrible, yet most important, discoveries of our age has been that, if you really wish to destroy a person and turn him into an automaton, the surest method is not physical torture, in the strict sense, but simply to keep him awake, i.e., in an existential relation to life without intermission.
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The image of myself which I try to create in my own mind in order that I may love myself is very different from the image which I try to create in the minds of others in order that they may love me.
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All works of art are commissioned in the sense that no artist can create one by a simple act of will but must wait until what he believes to be a good idea for a work comes to him.
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Civilizations should be measured by the degree of diversity attained and the degree of unity retained.
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I see little hope for a peaceful world until men are excluded from the realm of foreign policy altogether and all decisions concerning international relations are reserved for women, preferably married ones.
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Let us honor if we can the vertical man, though we value none but the horizontal one
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Now the leaves are falling fast, Nurse's flowers will not last Nurses to their graves are gone, And the prams go rolling on.
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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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Poetry might be defined as the clear expression of mixed feelings.
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Of course,Behaviourism 'works'. So does torture.
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Sob, heavy world Sob as you spin, Mantled in mist Remote from the happy.
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The primary function of poetry, as of all the arts, is to make us more aware of ourselves and the world around us. I do not know if such increased awareness makes us more moral or more efficient. I hope not. I think it makes us more human, and I am quite certain it makes us more difficult to deceive.
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The words of a dead man are modified in the guts of the living.
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Attacking bad books is not only a waste of time but also bad for the character. If I find a book really bad, the only interest I can derive from writing about it has to come from myself, from such display of intelligence, wit and malice as I can contrive. One cannot review a bad book without showing off.
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