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Thank God for books as an alternative to conversation.

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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Jórvík
Wystan Hugh Auden
Wystan Auden
Wystan H Auden
W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
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More quotes by W. H. Auden

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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.
W. H. Auden
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Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.
W. H. Auden
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There is no such thing as the State And no one exists alone Hunger allows no choice To the citizen or the police We must love one another or die.
W. H. Auden
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The habit-forming pain, Mismanagement and grief: We must suffer them all again.
W. H. Auden
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All pity is self-pity.
W. H. Auden
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Doom is dark and deeper than any sea-dingle.
W. H. Auden
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Man desires to be free and he desires to feel important. This places him in a dilemma, for the more he emancipates himself from necessity the less important he feels.
W. H. Auden
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The truly tragic kind of suffering is the kind produced and defiantly insisted upon by the hero himself so that, instead of making him better, it makes him worse and when he dies he is not reconciled to the law but defiant, that is, damned. Lear is not a tragic hero, Othello is.
W. H. Auden
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Those who will not reason, perish in the act. Those who will not act, perish for that reason.
W. H. Auden
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Poetry is the only art people haven't learned to consume like soup.
W. H. Auden
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One can only blaspheme if one believes.
W. H. Auden
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Man is a history-making creature, who can neither repeat his past, nor leave it behind.
W. H. Auden
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One of the troubles of our times is that we are all, I think, precocious as personalities and backward as characters.
W. H. Auden
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Hemingway is terribly limited. His technique is good for short stories, for people who meet once in a bar very late at night, but do not enter into relations. But not for the novel.
W. H. Auden
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No being can make another one happy.
W. H. Auden
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Defenceless under the night Our world in stupor lies Yet, dotted everywhere, Ironic points of light Flash out wherever the Just Exchange their messages: May I, composed like them Of Eros and of dust, Beleaguered by the same Negation and despair, Show an affirming flame.
W. H. Auden
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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.
W. H. Auden
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So long as we think of it objectively, time is Fate or Chance, the factor in our lives for which we are not responsible, and about which we can do nothing but when we begin to think of it subjectively, we feel responsible for our time, and the notion of punctuality arises.
W. H. Auden
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We are all here on earth to help others.
W. H. Auden
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Death is the sound of distant thunder at a picnic.
W. H. Auden