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Desire, even in its wildest tantrums, can neither persuade me it is love nor stop me from wishing it were.

W. H. Auden

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W. H. Auden
Age: 66 †
Born: 1907
Born: February 21
Died: 1973
Died: September 28
Author
Composer
Essayist
Librettist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Playwright
Poet
Screenwriter
University Teacher
Writer
Jórvík
Wystan Hugh Auden
Wystan Auden
Wystan H Auden
W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
Wishing
Sensual
Neither
Stop
Wish
Desire
Tantrums
Even
Wildest
Love
Persuade

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The truly tragic kind of suffering is the kind produced and defiantly insisted upon by the hero himself so that, instead of making him better, it makes him worse and when he dies he is not reconciled to the law but defiant, that is, damned. Lear is not a tragic hero, Othello is.
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By mourning tongues The death of the poet was kept from his poems.
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Swans in the winter air A white perfection have
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Accurate scholarship can unearth the whole offence from luther untill noe that has driven a culture mad. From what occured at linz what huge imago made a psychopathic god. i and the public know what all schoolchildren learn those to whom evil is done do evil in return.
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The windiest militant trash Important Persons shout Is not so crude as our wish: What mad Nijinsky wrote About Diaghilev Is true of the normal heart For the error bred in the bone Of each woman and each man Craves what it cannot have Not universal love But to be loved alone.
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If age, which is certainly Just as wicked as youth, look any wiser, It is only that youth is still able to believe It will get away with anything, while age Knows only too well that it has got away with nothing.
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A dead man who never caused others to die seldom rates a statue.
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There has been a vast output of critical studies in contemporary poetry, some of them first rate, but I do not think that , as a rule, a poet should read them.
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There are bills to be paid, machines to keep in repair, Irregular verbs to learn, the Time Being to redeem From insignificance.
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When one looks into the window of a store which sells devotional art objects, one can't help wishing the iconoclasts had won.
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Politics cannot be a science, because in politics theory and practice cannot be separated, and the sciences depend upon their separation.
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A poet, qua poet, has only one political duty, namely, in his own writing to set an example of the correct use of his mother tongue, which is always being corrupted. When words lose their meaning, physical force takes over.
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We were put on this Earth to help others. Why others were put here is beyond me.
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O let not Time deceive you, You cannot conquer Time.
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The slogan of Hell: Eat or be eaten. The slogan of Heaven: Eat and be eaten.
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Of course,Behaviourism 'works'. So does torture.
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Sob, heavy world Sob as you spin, Mantled in mist Remote from the happy.
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