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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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Wystan Hugh Auden
Wystan Auden
Wystan H Auden
W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
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More quotes by W. H. Auden
We till shadowed days are done, We must weep and sing Duty's conscious wrong, The Devil in the clock
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Herds of reindeer move across Miles and miles of golden moss
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The older lives like not to be stood in rows or at right angles.
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Money is the necessity that frees us from necessity.
W. H. Auden
When one looks into the window of a store which sells devotional art objects, one can't help wishing the iconoclasts had won.
W. H. Auden
The ear tends to be lazy, craves the familiar and is shocked by the unexpected the eye, on the other hand, tends to be impatient, craves the novel and is bored by repetition.
W. H. Auden
When I am in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a drawing room full of dukes.
W. H. Auden
It is already possible to imagine a society in which the majority of the population, that is to say, its laborers, will have almost as much leisure as in earlier times was enjoyed by the aristocracy. When one recalls how aristocracies in the past actually behaved, the prospect is not cheerful.
W. H. Auden
Christmas and Easter can be subjects for poetry, but Good Friday, like Auschwitz, cannot. The reality is so horrible it is not surprising that people should have found it a stumbling block to faith.
W. H. Auden
Ideally, government is the means by which all the individual wills are assured complete freedom of moral choice and at the same time prevented from ever clashing.
W. H. Auden
No being can make another one happy.
W. H. Auden
If we really want to live, we'd better start at once to try.
W. H. Auden
But once in a while the odd thing happens Once in a while the dream comes true And the whole pattern of life is altered Once in a while, the moon turns blue
W. H. Auden
Political history is far too criminal to be a fit subject of study for the young. Children should acquire their heroes and villians from fiction.
W. H. Auden
For time is inches And the heart's changes, Where ghost has haunted Lost and wanted.
W. H. Auden
With the farming of a verse Make a vineyard of the curse
W. H. Auden
We are not commanded (or forbidden) to love our mates, our children, our friends, our country because such affections come naturally to us and are good in themselves, although we may corrupt them. We are commanded to love our neighbor because our natural attitude toward the other is one of either indifference or hostility.
W. H. Auden
A shilling life will give you all the facts.
W. H. Auden
Look if you like, but you will have to leap.
W. H. Auden
One rational voice is dumb: over a grave The household of Impulse mourns one dearly loved. Sad is Eros, builder of cities, And weeping anarchic Aphrodite.
W. H. Auden
