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Those who will not reason, perish in the act. Those who will not act, perish for that reason.
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
Reason
Perish
More quotes by W. H. Auden
An honest self-portrait is extremely rare because a man who has reached the degree of self-consciousness presupposed by the desire to paint his own portrait has almost always also developed an ego-consciousness which paints himself painting himself, and introduces artificial highlights and dramatic shadows.
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What living occasion can, Be just to the absent?
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Had Greek civilization never existed ... we would never have become fully conscious.
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What the poet says has never been said before, but, once he has said it, his readers recognize its validity for themselves.
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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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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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Herds of reindeer move across Miles and miles of golden moss
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We would rather be ruined than changed. We would rather die in our dread than climb the cross of the moment and let our illusions die.
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The element of craftsmanship in poetry is obscured by the fact that all men are taught to speak and most to read and write, while very few men are taught to draw or paint or write music.
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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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Music is the best means we have of digesting time.
W. H. Auden
One can only blaspheme if one believes.
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My face looks like a wedding-cake left out in the rain.
W. H. Auden
A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.
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To read is to translate, for no two persons' experiences are the same. A bad reader is like a bad translator: he interprets literally when he ought to paraphrase and paraphrases when he ought to interpret literally.
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I'm always amazed at the American practice of allowing one party to a homosexual act to remain passive--it's so undemocratic. Sexmust be mutual.
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O plunge your hands in water, Plunge them in up to the wrist Stare, stare in the basin And wonder what you've missed.
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A writer is a maker, not a man of action: his private life is of no concern to anybody but himself, his family and his friends.
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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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A god who is both self-sufficient and content to remain so could not interest us enough to raise the question of his existence.
W. H. Auden
