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Every autobiography is concerned with two characters, a Don Quixote, the Ego, and a Sancho Panza, the Self.

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
Concerned
Two
Character
Self
Sancho
Every
Quixote
Autobiography
Ego
Characters

More quotes by W. H. Auden

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Man is a history-making creature, who can neither repeat his past, nor leave it behind.
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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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Follow, poet, follow right To the bottom of the night, With your unconstraining voice Still persuade us to rejoice With the farming of a verse Make a vineyard of the curse, Sing of human unsuccess In a rapture of distress In the deserts of the heart Let the healing fountain start, In the prison of his days Teach the free man how to praise.
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Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone. Silence the pianos and with muffled drum Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
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May it not be that, just as we have to have faith in Him, God has to have faith in us and, considering the history of the human race so far, may it not be that 'faith' is even more difficult for Him than it is for us?
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My face looks like a wedding-cake left out in the rain.
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All the rest is silence On the other side of the wall, And the silence ripeness, And the ripeness all.
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Money is the necessity that frees us from necessity. Of all novelists in any country, Trollope best understands the role of money. Compared with him even Balzac is a romantic.
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Sexual fidelity is more important in a homosexual relationship than in any other. In other relationships there are a variety of ties. But here, fidelity is the only bond.
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A false enchantment can all too easily last a lifetime.
W. H. Auden
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Look if you like, but you will have to leap.
W. H. Auden
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Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.
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Time will say nothing but I told you so.
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All wishes, whatever their apparent content, have the same and unvarying meaning: I refuse to be what I am.
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Though one cannot always Remember exactly why one has been happy, There is no forgetting that one was.
W. H. Auden
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One of the troubles of our times is that we are all, I think, precocious as personalities and backward as characters.
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To save your world you asked this man to die would this man, could he see you now, ask why?
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To have a sense of sin means to feel guilty at there being an ethical choice to make, a guilt which, however good I may become, remains unchanged.
W. H. Auden
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It's frightening how easy it is to commit murder in America. Just a drink too much. I can see myself doing it. In England, one feels all the social restraints holding one back. But here, anything can happen.
W. H. Auden
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Precisely because we do not communicate by singing, a song can be out of place but not out of character it is just as credible that a stupid person should sing beautifully as that a clever person should do so.
W. H. Auden