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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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Water is the soul of the Earth.
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Most people enjoy the sight of their own handwriting as they enjoy the smell of their own farts.
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One of the most horrible, yet most important, discoveries of our age has been that, if you really wish to destroy a person and turn him into an automaton, the surest method is not physical torture, in the strict sense, but simply to keep him awake, i.e., in an existential relation to life without intermission.
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Had Greek civilization never existed ... we would never have become fully conscious.
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What living occasion can, Be just to the absent?
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A daydream is a meal at which images are eaten. Some of us are gourmets, some gourmands, and a good many take their images precooked out of a can and swallow them down whole, absent-mindedly and with little relish.
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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.
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A man is a form of life that dreams in order to act and acts in order to dream.
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In the end, art is small beer. The really serious things are earning one's living so as not to be a parasite and loving one's neighbor.
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The parlour cars and Pullmans are packed also with scented assassins, salad-eaters who murder on milk.
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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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Rhymes, meters, stanza forms, etc., are like servants. If the master is fair enough to win their affection and firm enough to command their respect, the result is an orderly happy household. If he is too tyrannical, they give notice if he lacks authority, they become slovenly, impertinent, drunk and dishonest.
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But once in a while the odd thing happens Once in a while the dream comes true And the whole pattern of life is altered Once in a while, the moon turns blue
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No human being is innocent, but there is a class of innocent human actions called Games.
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We are all here on earth to help others what on earth the others are here for I don't know.
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In a world of prayer, we are all equal in the sense that each of us is a unique person, with a unique perspective on the world, a member of a class of one.
W. H. Auden
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We must love one another or die
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The definition of prayer is paying careful and concentrated attention to something other than your own constructions.
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Young people, who are still uncertain of their identity, often try on a succession of masks in the hope of finding the one which suits them - the one, in fact, which is not a mask.
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If we really want to live, we'd better start at once to try.
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