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Over the tea-cups and in the square the tongue has its desire Still waters run deep, my dear, there's never smoke without fire.
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
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Fire
Waters
Water
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Desire
Tea
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More quotes by W. H. Auden
Death is the sound of distant thunder at a picnic.
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The lights must never go out, The music must always play
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Be subtle, various, ornamental, clever, And do not listen to those critics ever Whose crude provincial gullets crave in books Plain cooking made still plainer by plain cooks.
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A poet feels the impulse to create a work of art when the passive awe provoked by an event is transformed into a desire to express that awe in a rite of worship.
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Drama is based on the Mistake.
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Without Art, we should have no notion of the sacred without Science, we should always worship false gods.
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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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Laziness acknowledges the relation of the present to the past but ignores its relation to the future impatience acknowledge its relation to the future but ignores its relation to the past neither the lazy nor the impatient man, that is, accepts the present instant in its full reality and so cannot love his neighbour completely.
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But if a stranger in the train asks me my occupation, I never answer writer for fear that he may go on to ask me what I write, and to answer poetry would embarrass us both, for we both know that nobody can earn a living simply by writing poetry.
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Defenceless under the night Our world in stupor lies Yet, dotted everywhere, Ironic points of light Flash out wherever the Just Exchange their messages: May I, composed like them Of Eros and of dust, Beleaguered by the same Negation and despair, Show an affirming flame.
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Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.
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The center that I cannot find is known to my unconscious mind.
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Recipe for the upbringing of a poet: 'As much neurosis as the child can bear.
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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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'Healing,' Papa would tell me, 'is not a science, but the intuitive art of wooing nature.'
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We honor founders of these starving cities, Whose honor is the image of our sorrow.
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The friends who met here and embraced are gone, Each to his own mistake.
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If there are any souls in hell, it is because that is where they insist on being.
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Shall memory restore The steps and the shore, The face and the meeting place.
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The parlour cars and Pullmans are packed also with scented assassins, salad-eaters who murder on milk.
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