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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?

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

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Choice of attention - to pay attention to this and ignore that - is to the inner life what choice of action is to the outer. In both cases, a man is responsible for his choice and must accept the consequences, whatever they may be.
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Precisely because we do not communicate by singing, a song can be out of place but not out of character it is just as credible that a stupid person should sing beautifully as that a clever person should do so.
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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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All wishes, whatever their apparent content, have the same and unvarying meaning: I refuse to be what I am.
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Aphorisms are essentially an aristocratic genre of writing. The aphorist does not argue or explain, he asserts and implicit in his assertion is a conviction that he is wiser and more intelligent than his readers.
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Every high C accurately struck demolishes the theory that we are the irresponsible puppets of fate or chance.
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A small grove massacred to the last ash, An oak with heart-rot, give away the show: This great society is going to smash They cannot fool us with how fast they go, How much they cost each other and the gods. A culture is no better than its woods.
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Language is the mother, not the handmaiden, of thought words will tell you things you never thought or felt before.
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Time will say nothing but I told you so, Time only knows the price we have to pay If I could tell you I would let you know.
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Adjectives are the potbelly of poetry.
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Art is born of humiliation.
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The primary function of poetry, as of all the arts, is to make us more aware of ourselves and the world around us. I do not know if such increased awareness makes us more moral or more efficient. I hope not. I think it makes us more human, and I am quite certain it makes us more difficult to deceive.
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Though one cannot always Remember exactly why one has been happy, There is no forgetting that one was.
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Ideally, government is the means by which all the individual wills are assured complete freedom of moral choice and at the same time prevented from ever clashing.
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Let me see what I wrote so I know what I think
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Desire, even in its wildest tantrums, can neither persuade me it is love nor stop me from wishing it were.
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The camera may do justice to laughter, but must degrade sorrow.
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The class distinctions proper to a democratic society are not those of rank or money, still less, as is apt to happen when these are abandoned, of race, but of age.
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There's always another story. There's more than meets the eye.
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Music can be made anywhere, is invisible and does not smell.
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