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Whatever you do, good or bad, people will always have something negative to say
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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More quotes by W. H. Auden
History is, strictly speaking, the study of questions the study of answers belongs to anthropology and sociology.
W. H. Auden
A poet must never make a statement simply because it is sounds poetically exciting he must also believe it to be true.
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O plunge your hands in water, Plunge them in up to the wrist Stare, stare in the basin And wonder what you've missed.
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Those to whom evil is doneDo evil in return.
W. H. Auden
We are all here on earth to help others what on earth the others are here for I don't know.
W. H. Auden
Dance till the stars come down from the rafters Dance, Dance, Dance 'till you drop.
W. H. Auden
To be happy means to be free, not from pain or fear, but from care or anxiety.
W. H. Auden
My face looks like a wedding-cake left out in the rain.
W. H. Auden
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?
W. H. Auden
If age, which is certainly Just as wicked as youth, look any wiser, It is only that youth is still able to believe It will get away with anything, while age Knows only too well that it has got away with nothing.
W. H. Auden
It is already possible to imagine a society in which the majority of the population, that is to say, its laborers, will have almost as much leisure as in earlier times was enjoyed by the aristocracy. When one recalls how aristocracies in the past actually behaved, the prospect is not cheerful.
W. H. Auden
The camera may do justice to laughter, but must degrade sorrow.
W. H. Auden
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
W. H. Auden
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
A professor is someone who talks in someone else's sleep.
W. H. Auden
A vice in common can be the ground of a friendship but not a virtue in common. X and Y may be friends because they are both drunkards or womanizers but, if they are both sober and chaste, they are friends for some other reason.
W. H. Auden
To read is to translate, for no two persons' experiences are the same. A bad reader is like a bad translator: he interprets literally when he ought to paraphrase and paraphrases when he ought to interpret literally.
W. H. Auden
Had Greek civilization never existed ... we would never have become fully conscious.
W. H. Auden
Swans in the winter air A white perfection have
W. H. Auden
Whatever the field under discussion, those who engage in debate must not only believe in each other's good faith, but also in their capacity to arrive at the truth.
W. H. Auden