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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
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
Without
Dear
Never
Deep
Square
Fire
Waters
Water
Squares
Desire
Tea
Running
Cups
Stills
Smoke
Still
Tongue

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God is Love, we are taught as children to believe. But when we first begin to get some inkling of how He loves us, we are repelled it seems so cold, indeed, not love at all as we understand the word.
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I'm always amazed at the American practice of allowing one party to a homosexual act to remain passive--it's so undemocratic. Sexmust be mutual.
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There's only one good test of pornography. Get twelve normal men to read the book, and then ask them, ''Did you get an erection?'' If the answer is ''Yes'' from a majority of the twelve, then the book is pornographic.
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Organic growth is a cyclical process it is just as true to say that the oak is a potential acorn as it is to say the acorn is a potential oak. But the process of writing a poem, of making any art object, is not cyclical but a motion in one direction toward a definite end.
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Art is born of humiliation.
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Learn from your dreams what you lack.
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Language is the mother, not the handmaiden, of thought words will tell you things you never thought or felt before.
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Most people call something profound, not because it is near some important truth but because it is distant from ordinary life. Thus, darkness is profound to the eye, silence to the ear what-is-not is the profundity of what-is.
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Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone. Silence the pianos and with muffled drum Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
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One can only blaspheme if one believes.
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A poet is a professional maker of verbal objects.
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Money cannot buy the fuel of love but is excellent kindling.
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About suffering they were never wrong, The Old Masters.
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Few can remember clearly when innocence came to a sudden end, the moment at which we ask for the first time: Am I loved?
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All good art is in the nature of a letter written to amuse a sick friend. Too much art, particularly in our time, is only a letter written to oneself.
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It is, for example, axiomatic that we should all think of ourselves as being more sensitive than other people because, when we are insensitive in our dealings with others, we cannot be aware of it at the time: conscious insensitivity is a self-contradiction.
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Whatever you do, good or bad, people will always have something negative to say
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Far from his illness The wolves ran on through the evergreen forests, The peasant river was untempted by the fashionable quays By mourning tongues The death of the poet was kept from his poems.
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Choice of attention - to pay attention to this and ignore that - is to the inner life what choice of action is to the outer. In both cases, a man is responsible for his choice and must accept the consequences, whatever they may be.
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'Healing,' Papa would tell me, 'is not a science, but the intuitive art of wooing nature.'
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