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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
Men
Ivory
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Average
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Experience
Commonest
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Passivity
More quotes by W. H. Auden
Anyone who has a child today should train him to be either a physicist or a ballet dancer. Then he'll escape.
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The most important truths are likely to be those which society at that time least wants to hear.
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Base words are uttered only by the base And can for such at once be understood But noble platitudes - ah, there's a case Where the most careful scrutiny is needed To tell a voice that's genuinely good From one that's base but merely has succeeded.
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It's usually the stupid people that develop long illnesses. You need more than indolence and selfishness, you need endurance to make a good patient.
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Composing mortals with immortal fire.
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The most difficult problem in personal knowledge, whether of oneself or of others, is the problem of guessing when to think as a historian and when to think as an anthropologist.
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I and the public know What all schoolchildren learn, Those to whom evil is done Do evil in return.
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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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Let us honor if we can the vertical man, though we value none but the horizontal one
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The slogan of Hell: Eat or be eaten. The slogan of Heaven: Eat and be eaten.
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I'll love you, dear, I'll love you till China and Africa meet and the river jumps over the mountain and the salmon sing in the street.
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To be free is often to be lonely.
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It takes little talent to see what lies under one's nose, a good deal to know in what direction to point that organ.
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Had Greek civilization never existed ... we would never have become fully conscious.
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Organic growth is a cyclical process it is just as true to say that the oak is a potential acorn as it is to say the acorn is a potential oak. But the process of writing a poem, of making any art object, is not cyclical but a motion in one direction toward a definite end.
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All sins tend to be addictive, and the terminal point of addiction is damnation.
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No poet or novelist wishes he were the only one who ever lived, but most of them wish they were the only one alive, and quite a number fondly believe their wish has been granted.
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a culture is no better than its woods
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It's better to say, 'I'm suffering,' than to say, 'This landscape is ugly.
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Behind the corpse in the reservoir, behind the ghost on the links, Behind the lady who dances and the man who madly drinks, Under the look of fatigue, the attack of migraine and the sigh There is always another story, there is more than meets the eye.
W. H. Auden
