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There is no such thing as the State And no one exists alone Hunger allows no choice To the citizen or the police We must love one another or die.

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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Literary Critic
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Jórvík
Wystan Hugh Auden
Wystan Auden
Wystan H Auden
W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
Choices
Citizen
Dies
Allows
State
Hunger
Another
Exists
States
Police
Must
Choice
Thing
Citizens
Love
Alone

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Without Art, we should have no notion of the sacred without Science, we should always worship false gods.
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All sins tend to be addictive, and the terminal point of addiction is damnation.
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Every American poet feels that the whole responsibility for contemporary poetry has fallen upon his shoulders, that he is a literary aristocracy of one.
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Young people, who are still uncertain of their identity, often try on a succession of masks in the hope of finding the one which suits them - the one, in fact, which is not a mask.
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The parlour cars and Pullmans are packed also with scented assassins, salad-eaters who murder on milk.
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Dogmatic theological statements are neither logical propositions nor poetic utterances. They are ''shaggy dog'' stories they have a point, but he who tries too hard to get it will miss it.
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But he would have us most of all remember to be enthusiastic over the night. Not only for the sense of wonder it alone has to offer but also because it needs our love. For with sad eyes its delectable creatures look up and beg us dumbly to ask them to follow. They are exiles who long for a future that lies in our power.
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Swans in the winter air A white perfection have
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You must go to bed with friends or whores, where money makes up the difference in beauty or desire.
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Death is the sound of distant thunder at a picnic.
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Perhaps there is only one cardinal sin: impatience. Because of impatience we were driven out of Paradise, because of impatience we cannot return.
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There are not many English novels which deserve to be called great: Parade's End is one of them.
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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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We honor founders of these starving cities, Whose honor is the image of our sorrow.
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The eye likes novelty, but the ear craves familiarity.
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My poetry doesn't change from place to place - it changes with the years. It's very important to be one's age. You get ideas you have to turn down - 'I'm sorry, no longer' 'I'm sorry, not yet.
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A craftsman knows in advance what the finished result will be, while the artist knows only what it will be when he has finished it.
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Hemingway is terribly limited. His technique is good for short stories, for people who meet once in a bar very late at night, but do not enter into relations. But not for the novel.
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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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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.
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