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The most exciting rhythms seem unexpected and complex, the most beautiful melodies simple and inevitable.
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
Almost all of our relationships begin and most of them continue as forms of mutual exploitation, a mental or physical barter, to be terminated when one or both parties run out of goods.
W. H. Auden
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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All I have is a voice.
W. H. Auden
Out on the lawn I lie in bed, Vega conspicuous overhead.
W. H. Auden
Does God judge us by appearances? I Suspect that He does.
W. H. Auden
To be happy means to be free, not from pain or fear, but from care or anxiety.
W. H. Auden
Few can remember clearly when innocence came to a sudden end, the moment at which we ask for the first time: Am I loved?
W. H. Auden
Christmas and Easter can be subjects for poetry, but Good Friday, like Auschwitz, cannot. The reality is so horrible it is not surprising that people should have found it a stumbling block to faith.
W. H. Auden
O plunge your hands in water, Plunge them in up to the wrist Stare, stare in the basin And wonder what you've missed.
W. H. Auden
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.
W. H. Auden
To make one, there must be two.
W. H. Auden
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 sky is darkening like a stain Something is going to fall like rain And it won't be flowers
W. H. Auden
In headaches and in worry Vaguely life leaks away, And Time will have his fancy To-morrow or today.
W. H. Auden
Those who will not reason, perish in the act. Those who will not act, perish for that reason.
W. H. Auden
When someone between twenty and forty says, apropos of a work of art, 'I know what I like,' he is really saying 'I have no taste of my own but accept the taste of my cultural milieu.
W. H. Auden
Herds of reindeer move across Miles and miles of golden moss
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
God may reduce you on Judgment Day to tears of shame, reciting by heart the poems you would have written, had your life been good.
W. H. Auden
There has been a vast output of critical studies in contemporary poetry, some of them first rate, but I do not think that , as a rule, a poet should read them.
W. H. Auden
