Quote

The desires of the heart are as crooked as corkscrews Not to be born is the best for man The second best is a formal order The dance's pattern, dance while you can. Dance, dance, for the figure is easy The tune is catching and will not stop Dance till the stars come down from the rafters Dance, dance, dance till you drop.

W. H. Auden

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W. H. Auden
Age: 66 †
Born: 1907
Born: February 21
Died: 1973
Died: September 28
Author
Composer
Essayist
Librettist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Playwright
Poet
Screenwriter
University Teacher
Writer
Jórvík
Wystan Hugh Auden
Wystan Auden
Wystan H Auden
W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
Come
Second
Tunes
Heart
Stop
Drop
Men
Stars
Desires
Rafters
Desire
Till
Crooked
Born
Patterns
Catching
Easy
Figure
Tune
Order
Dance
Pattern
Best
Figures
Formal

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And none will hear the postman’s knock Without a quickening of the heart. For who can bear to feel himself forgotten?
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Shall memory restore The steps and the shore, The face and the meeting place.
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The true men of action in our time, those who transform the world, are not the politicians and statesmen, but the scientists
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A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us.
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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.
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Like everything which is not the involuntary result of fleeting emotion but the creation of time and will, any marriage, happy or unhappy, is infinitely more interesting than any romance, however passionate.
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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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The eye likes novelty, but the ear craves familiarity.
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Hunger allows no choice.
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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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My poetry doesn't change from place to place - it changes with the years. It's very important to be one's age. You get ideas you have to turn down - 'I'm sorry, no longer' 'I'm sorry, not yet.
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What the mass media offers is not popular art, but entertainment which is intended to be consumed like food, forgotten, and replaced by a new dish.
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To pray is to pay attention to something or someone other than oneself.
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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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To be happy means to be free, not from pain or fear, but from care or anxiety.
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Love each other or perish.
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The words of a dead man are modified in the guts of the living.
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Geniuses are the luckiest of mortals because what they must do is the same as what they most want to do.
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Sexual fidelity is more important in a homosexual relationship than in any other. In other relationships there are a variety of ties. But here, fidelity is the only bond.
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To ask the hard question is simple.
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