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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
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W. H. Auden
Age: 66 †
Born: 1907
Born: February 21
Died: 1973
Died: September 28
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Jórvík
Wystan Hugh Auden
Wystan Auden
Wystan H Auden
W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
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Sky
More quotes by W. H. Auden
Laziness acknowledges the relation of the present to the past but ignores its relation to the future impatience acknowledge its relation to the future but ignores its relation to the past neither the lazy nor the impatient man, that is, accepts the present instant in its full reality and so cannot love his neighbour completely.
W. H. Auden
A poor American feels guilty at being poor, but less guilty than an American rentier who has inherited wealth but is doing nothingto increase it what can the latter do but take to drink and psychoanalysis?
W. H. Auden
We who must die demand a miracle. How could the Eternal do a temporal act, The Infinite become a finite fact? Nothing can save us that is possible: We who must die demand a miracle.
W. H. Auden
Soft as the earth is mankind and both need to be altered.
W. H. Auden
I just try to put the thing out and hope somebody will read it. Someone says: 'Whom do you write for?' I reply: 'Do you read me?' If they say 'Yes,' I say, 'Do you like it?' If they say 'No,' then I say, 'I don't write for you.'
W. H. Auden
Whatever you do, good or bad, people will always have something negative to say
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
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.
W. H. Auden
Detective stories have nothing to do with works of art.
W. H. Auden
Between the ages of twenty and forty we are engaged in the process of discovering who we are, which involves learning the differences between accidental limitations which it is our duty to outgrow and the necessary limitations of our nature beyond which we cannot trespass with impunity.
W. H. Auden
Moreover, if great men are the only hope of the Evolutionary Process, they are morally bound to rule over the masses for their own good -- we are all here on earth to help others: what on earth the others are here for, I don't know -- and the masses have no right whatsoever to resist them.
W. H. Auden
Aside from purely technical analysis, nothing can be said about music, except when it is bad when it is good, one can only listen and be grateful.
W. H. Auden
An honest self-portrait is extremely rare because a man who has reached the degree of self-consciousness presupposed by the desire to paint his own portrait has almost always also developed an ego-consciousness which paints himself painting himself, and introduces artificial highlights and dramatic shadows.
W. H. Auden
The eye likes novelty, but the ear craves familiarity.
W. H. Auden
Music is the best means we have of digesting time.
W. H. Auden
There's only one good test of pornography. Get twelve normal men to read the book, and then ask them, ''Did you get an erection?'' If the answer is ''Yes'' from a majority of the twelve, then the book is pornographic.
W. H. Auden
The chances are that, in the course of his lifetime, the major poet will write more bad poems than the minor, simply because major poets write a lot.
W. H. Auden
Herds of reindeer move across Miles and miles of golden moss
W. H. Auden
There are good books which are only for adults. There are no good books which are only for children.
W. H. Auden
Art is born of humiliation.
W. H. Auden
