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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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Wystan Hugh Auden
Wystan Auden
Wystan H Auden
W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
Perish
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The nightingales are sobbing in The orchards of our mothers, And hearts that we broke long ago Have long been breaking others Tears are round, the sea is deep: Roll them overboard and sleep.
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The class distinctions proper to a democratic society are not those of rank or money, still less, as is apt to happen when these are abandoned, of race, but of age.
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A daydream is a meal at which images are eaten. Some of us are gourmets, some gourmands, and a good many take their images precooked out of a can and swallow them down whole, absent-mindedly and with little relish.
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The relation of faith between subject and object is unique in every case. Hundreds may believe, but each has to believe by himself.
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About suffering they were never wrong, The Old Masters.
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Every high C accurately struck demolishes the theory that we are the irresponsible puppets of fate or chance.
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The closest modern equivalent to the Homeric hero is the ace fighter pilot.
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When someone between twenty and forty says, apropos of a work of art, 'I know what I like,' he is really saying 'I have no taste of my own but accept the taste of my cultural milieu.
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A tremendous number of people in America work very hard at something that bores them. Even a rich man thinks he has to go down to the office everyday. Not because he likes it but because he can't think of anything else to do.
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Marriage is rarely bliss But, surely it would be worse As particles to pelt At thousands of miles per sec About a universe In which a lover's kiss Would either not be felt Or break the loved one's neck.
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Composing mortals with immortal fire.
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Precisely because we do not communicate by singing, a song can be out of place but not out of character it is just as credible that a stupid person should sing beautifully as that a clever person should do so.
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History marched to the drums of a clear idea...
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If we really want to live, we'd better start at once to try.
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We were put on this earth to make things.
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What living occasion can, Be just to the absent?
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Lovers have lived so long with giants and elves, they won't believe again in their own size.
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An unmanly sort of man whose love life seems to have been largely confined to crying in laps and playing mouse.
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My deepest feeling about politicians is that they are dangerous lunatics to be avoided when possible and carefully humored people, above all, to whom one must never tell the truth.
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Poetry is the only art people haven't learned to consume like soup.
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