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There must always be two kinds of art: escape-art, for man needs escape as he needs food and deep sleep, and parable-art, that art which shall teach man to unlearn hatred and learn love.

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
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University Teacher
Writer
Jórvík
Wystan Hugh Auden
Wystan Auden
Wystan H Auden
W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
Needs
Food
Kind
Shall
Parable
Always
Teach
Parables
Men
Sleep
Unlearn
Love
Learn
Escape
Art
Kinds
Two
Hatred
Must
Deep

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The way to read a fairy tale is to throw yourself in.
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Courses in prosody, rhetoric and comparative philology would be required of all students, and every student would have to select three courses out of courses in mathematics, natural history, geology, meteorology, archaeology, mythology, liturgics, cooking.
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Long ago the accusations had begun, And suddenly knew by whom it had been judged
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All works of art are commissioned in the sense that no artist can create one by a simple act of will but must wait until what he believes to be a good idea for a work comes to him.
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The Ogre does what ogres can, Deeds quite impossible for Man, But one prize is beyond his reach, The Ogre cannot master Speech: About a subjugated plain, Among its desperate and slain, The Ogre stalks with hands on hips, While drivel gushes from his lips.
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We till shadowed days are done, We must weep and sing Duty's conscious wrong, The Devil in the clock
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One rational voice is dumb: over a grave The household of Impulse mourns one dearly loved. Sad is Eros, builder of cities, And weeping anarchic Aphrodite.
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Aphorisms are essentially an aristocratic genre of writing. The aphorist does not argue or explain, he asserts and implicit in his assertion is a conviction that he is wiser and more intelligent than his readers.
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Nobody is ever sent to Hell: he or she insists on going there.
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Swans in the winter air A white perfection have
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Each in the cell of himself is almost convinced of his freedom.
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One cannot review a bad book without showing off.
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Alone, alone, about the dreadful wood / Of conscious evil runs a lost mankind, / Dreading to find its Father.
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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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Fame often makes a writer vain, but seldom makes him proud.
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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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Blessed be all metrical rules that forbid automatic responses, force us to have second thoughts, free us from the fetters of Self.
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Detective stories have nothing to do with works of art.
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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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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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