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The commonest ivory tower is that of the average man, the state of passivity towards experience.
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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Jórvík
Wystan Hugh Auden
Wystan Auden
Wystan H Auden
W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
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More quotes by W. H. Auden
O let not Time deceive you, You cannot conquer Time.
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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.
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Man desires to be free and he desires to feel important. This places him in a dilemma, for the more he emancipates himself from necessity the less important he feels.
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Health is the state about which medicine has nothing to say.
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So long as we think of it objectively, time is Fate or Chance, the factor in our lives for which we are not responsible, and about which we can do nothing but when we begin to think of it subjectively, we feel responsible for our time, and the notion of punctuality arises.
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Some writers confuse authenticity, which they ought always to aim at, with originality, which they should never bother about.
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Acts of injustice done Between the setting and the rising sun In history lie like bones, each one.
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'Healing,' Papa would tell me, 'is not a science, but the intuitive art of wooing nature.'
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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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A poor American feels guilty at being poor, but less guilty than an American rentier who has inherited wealth but is doing nothingto increase it what can the latter do but take to drink and psychoanalysis?
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All the literati keep An imaginary friend.
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And make us as Newton was, who in his garden watching The apple falling towards England, became aware Between himself and her of an eternal tie.
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Earth, receive an honored guest William Yeats is laid to rest. Let the Irish vessel lie Emptied of its poetry.
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Had Greek civilization never existed ... we would never have become fully conscious.
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Routine, in an intelligent man, is a sign of ambition.
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Poetry is the only art people haven't learned to consume like soup.
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What we have not named as a symbol escapes our notice.
W. H. Auden
We do not change as we grow up. The difference between the child and the adult is that the former doesn't know who he is and the latter does.
W. H. Auden
The stars are dead. The animals will not look: We are left alone with our day, and the time is short, and History to the defeated May say Alas but cannot help nor pardon.
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In the eyes of others a man is a poet if he has written one good poem. In his own he is only a poet at the moment when he is making his last revision to a new poem. The moment before, he was still only a potential poet the moment after, he is a man who has ceased to write poetry, perhaps forever.
W. H. Auden
