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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.

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

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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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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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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 habit-forming pain, Mismanagement and grief: We must suffer them all again.
W. H. Auden
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You shall love your crooked neighbour, with your crooked heart.
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As biological organisms made of matter, we are subject to the laws of physics and biology: as conscious persons who create our own history we are free to decide what that history shall be. Without science, we should have no notion of equality without art, no notion of liberty.
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A small grove massacred to the last ash, An oak with heart-rot, give away the show: This great society is going to smash They cannot fool us with how fast they go, How much they cost each other and the gods. A culture is no better than its woods.
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The slogan of Hell: Eat or be eaten. The slogan of Heaven: Eat and be eaten.
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Recipe for the upbringing of a poet: 'As much neurosis as the child can bear.
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God is Love, we are taught as children to believe. But when we first begin to get some inkling of how He loves us, we are repelled it seems so cold, indeed, not love at all as we understand the word.
W. H. Auden
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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.
W. H. Auden
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Words are for those with promises to keep.
W. H. Auden
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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
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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.
W. H. Auden
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In life the loser's score is always zero.
W. H. Auden
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Fate succumbs many a species: one alone jeopardises itself.
W. H. Auden
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a culture is no better than its woods
W. H. Auden
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Blessed be all metrical rules that forbid automatic responses, force us to have second thoughts, free us from the fetters of Self.
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All sins tend to be addictive, and the terminal point of addiction is damnation.
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Proper names are poetry in the raw. Like all poetry they are untranslatable.
W. H. Auden