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We would rather be ruined than changed. We would rather die in our dread than climb the cross of the moment and let our illusions die.

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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Literary Critic
Literary Historian
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Jórvík
Wystan Hugh Auden
Wystan Auden
Wystan H Auden
W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
Dies
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Moments
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Would
Growth
Illusions
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Climb

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The surest sign that a man has a genuine taste of his own is that he is uncertain of it.
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Behind you swiftly the figure comes softly, The spot on your skin is a shocking disease.
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I and the public know What all schoolchildren learn, Those to whom evil is done Do evil in return.
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All poets adore explosions, thunderstorms, tornadoes, conflagrations, ruins, scenes of spectacular carnage. The poetic imagination is not at all a desirable quality in a statesman.
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The glacier knocks in the cupboard, The desert sighs in the bed, And the crack in the teacup opens A lane to the land of the dead.
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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.
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Does God judge us by appearances? I Suspect that He does.
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Look if you like, but you will have to leap.
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Harrow the house of the dead look shining at New styles of architecture, a change of heart.
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Life is a picnic on a precipice.
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Words have no word for words that are not true.
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Caesar's double-bed is warm As an unimportant clerk Writes i do not like my work On a pink official form.
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My face looks like a wedding-cake left out in the rain.
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You need not see what someone is doing to know if it is his vocation, you have only to watch his eyes: a cook mixing a sauce, a surgeon making a primary incision, a clerk completing a bill of lading wear the same rapt expression, forgetting themselves in a function. How beautiful it is, that eye-on-the-obje ct look.
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Man is a history-making creature, who can neither repeat his past, nor leave it behind.
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Hunger allows no choice.
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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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Why doesn't the United States take over the monarchy and unite with England? England does have important assets. Naturally the longer you wait, the more they will dwindle. At least you could use it for a summer resort instead of Maine.
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History marched to the drums of a clear idea...
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