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There is a great deal of difference in believing something still, and believing it again.

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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The only reason the Protestants and Catholics have given up the idea of universal domination is because they've realised they can't get away with it.
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Lost in a haunted wood, Children afraid of the night Who have never been happy or good.
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A poet is a professional maker of verbal objects.
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Those who will not reason, perish in the act. Those who will not act, perish for that reason.
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Beloved, we are always in the wrong, Handling so clumsily our stupid lives, Suffering too little or too long, Too careful even in our selfish loves: The decorative manias we obey Die in grimaces round us every day, Yet through their tohu-bohu comes a voice Which utters an absurd command - Rejoice.
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A poet must never make a statement simply because it is sounds poetically exciting he must also believe it to be true.
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Moreover, if great men are the only hope of the Evolutionary Process, they are morally bound to rule over the masses for their own good -- we are all here on earth to help others: what on earth the others are here for, I don't know -- and the masses have no right whatsoever to resist them.
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I just try to put the thing out and hope somebody will read it. Someone says: 'Whom do you write for?' I reply: 'Do you read me?' If they say 'Yes,' I say, 'Do you like it?' If they say 'No,' then I say, 'I don't write for you.'
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Man desires to be free and he desires to feel important. This places him in a dilemma, for the more he emancipates himself from necessity the less important he feels.
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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.
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The sky is darkening like a stain Something is going to fall like rain And it won't be flowers
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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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To my generation no other English poet seemed so perfectly to express the sensibility of a male adolescent. If I do not now turn to him very often, I am eternally grateful to him for the joy he gave me in my youth.
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Get up very early and get going at once. In fact, work first and wash afterwards.
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You know there are no secrets in America. It's quite different in England, where people think of a secret as a shared relation between two people.
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The primary function of poetry, as of all the arts, is to make us more aware of ourselves and the world around us. I do not know if such increased awareness makes us more moral or more efficient. I hope not. I think it makes us more human, and I am quite certain it makes us more difficult to deceive.
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About suffering they were never wrong, The Old Masters How well they understood Its human position how it takes place While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along.
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Few people take an interest in Iceland, but in those few the interest is passionate.
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The surest sign that a man has a genuine taste of his own is that he is uncertain of it.
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America has always been a country of amateurs where the professional, that is to say, the man who claims authority as a member of an élite which knows the law in some field or other, is an object of distrust and resentment.
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