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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
Perish
Reason

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God may reduce you on Judgment Day to tears of shame, reciting by heart the poems you would have written, had your life been good.
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In a game, just losing is almost as satisfying as just winning... In life the loser's score is always zero.
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Poetry might be defined as the clear expression of mixed feelings.
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The law cannot forgive, for the law has not been wronged, only broken only persons can be wronged. The law can pardon, but it can only pardon what it has the power to punish.
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The countenances of children, like those of animals, are masks, not faces, for they have not yet developed a significant profile of their own.
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Hunger allows no choice.
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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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Time will say nothing but I told you so, Time only knows the price we have to pay If I could tell you I would let you know.
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Like everything which is not the involuntary result of fleeting emotion but the creation of time and will, any marriage, happy or unhappy, is infinitely more interesting than any romance, however passionate.
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The way to read a fairy tale is to throw yourself in.
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Whatever the field under discussion, those who engage in debate must not only believe in each other's good faith, but also in their capacity to arrive at the truth.
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See without looking, hear without listening, breathe without asking.
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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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Caesar's double-bed is warm As an unimportant clerk Writes i do not like my work On a pink official form.
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The friends who met here and embraced are gone, Each to his own mistake.
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And none will hear the postman’s knock Without a quickening of the heart. For who can bear to feel himself forgotten?
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Thou shalt not answer questionnaires Or quizzes upon world affairs, Nor with compliance Take any test. Thou shalt not sit with statisticians nor commit A social science.
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A verbal art like poetry is reflective it stops to think. Music is immediate, it goes on to become.
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Attacking bad books is not only a waste of time but also bad for the character. If I find a book really bad, the only interest I can derive from writing about it has to come from myself, from such display of intelligence, wit and malice as I can contrive. One cannot review a bad book without showing off.
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We are lived by powers we pretend to understand.
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