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Poetry makes nothing happen.

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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Does God judge us by appearances? I Suspect that He does.
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What answer to the meaning of existence should one require beyond the right to exercise one's gifts?
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We honor founders of these starving cities, Whose honor is the image of our sorrow.
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Adjectives are the potbelly of poetry.
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Money cannot buy the fuel of love but is excellent kindling.
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The law cannot forgive, for the law has not been wronged, only broken only persons can be wronged. The law can pardon, but it can only pardon what it has the power to punish.
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A person incapable of imaging another world than given to him by his senses would be subhuman, and a person who identifies his imaginary world with the world of sensory fact has become insane.
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In a land which is fully settled, most men must accept their local environment or try to change it by political means only the exceptionally gifted or adventurous can leave to seek his fortune elsewhere. In America, on the other hand, to move on and make a fresh start somewhere else is still the normal reaction to dissatisfaction and failure.
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Time will say nothing but I told you so, Time only knows the price we have to pay If I could tell you I would let you know.
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Whatever you do, good or bad, people will always have something negative to say
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All the literati keep An imaginary friend.
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Private faces in public places Are wiser and nicer Than public faces in private places.
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Every high C accurately struck demolishes the theory that we are the irresponsible puppets of fate or chance.
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When someone between twenty and forty says, apropos of a work of art, 'I know what I like,' he is really saying 'I have no taste of my own but accept the taste of my cultural milieu.
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Every poet has his dream reader: mine keeps a look out for curious prosodic fauna like bacchics and choriambs.
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In relation to a writer, most readers believe in the Double Standard: they may be unfaithful to him as often as they like, but he must never, never be unfaithful to them.
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Every autobiography is concerned with two characters, a Don Quixote, the Ego, and a Sancho Panza, the Self.
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With the farming of a verse Make a vineyard of the curse
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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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A verbal art like poetry is reflective it stops to think. Music is immediate, it goes on to become.
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