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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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Wystan Hugh Auden
Wystan Auden
Wystan H Auden
W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
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Sincerity is technique.
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A poem is a verbal artifact which must be as skillfully and solidly constructed as a table or a motorcycle.
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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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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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Music is the best means we have of digesting time.
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Every American poet feels that the whole responsibility for contemporary poetry has fallen upon his shoulders, that he is a literary aristocracy of one.
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It takes little talent to see what lies under one's nose, a good deal to know in what direction to point that organ.
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There's always another story. There's more than meets the eye.
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May it not be that, just as we have to have faith in Him, God has to have faith in us and, considering the history of the human race so far, may it not be that 'faith' is even more difficult for Him than it is for us?
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All that we are not stares back at what we are.
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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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Like love we don't know where or why Like love we cant compel or fly Like Love we often weep Like Love we seldom keep
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Literary confessors are contemptible, like beggars who exhibit their sores for money, but not so contemptible as the public that buys their books.
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America has always been a country of amateurs where the professional, that is to say, the man who claims authority as a member of an élite which knows the law in some field or other, is an object of distrust and resentment.
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The closest modern equivalent to the Homeric hero is the ace fighter pilot.
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From beginning to end Wilde performed his life and continued to do so even after fame had taken the plot out of his own hands.
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We honor founders of these starving cities, Whose honor is the image of our sorrow.
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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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