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All the rest is silence On the other side of the wall, And the silence ripeness, And the ripeness all.

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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Literary Historian
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Jórvík
Wystan Hugh Auden
Wystan Auden
Wystan H Auden
W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
Ripeness
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Silence
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A man has his distinctive personal scent which his wife, his children and his dog can recognize. A crowd has a generalized stink. The public is odorless.
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The countenances of children, like those of animals, are masks, not faces, for they have not yet developed a significant profile of their own.
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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.
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Happy the hare at morning, for she cannot read The hunter's waking thoughts.
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Some writers confuse authenticity, which they ought always to aim at, with originality, which they should never bother about.
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I will love you forever swears the poet. I find this easy to swear too. I will love you at 4:15 pm next Tuesday - Is that still as easy?
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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.
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No good opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible.
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To pray is to pay attention to something or someone other than oneself.
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Nobody knows what the cause is, though some pretend they do it like some hidden assassin waiting to strike at you. Childless women get it, and men when they retire it as if there had to be some outlet for their foiled creative fire.
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Music is the best means we have of digesting time.
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Nobody is ever sent to Hell: he or she insists on going there.
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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.
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Man is a history-making creature, who can neither repeat his past, nor leave it behind.
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Civilizations should be measured by the degree of diversity attained and the degree of unity retained.
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Water is the soul of the Earth.
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God is Love, we are taught as children to believe. But when we first begin to get some inkling of how He loves us, we are repelled it seems so cold, indeed, not love at all as we understand the word.
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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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Cathedrals, luxury liners laden with souls, Holding to the east their hulls of stone.
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Lovers have lived so long with giants and elves, they won't believe again in their own size.
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