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A dead man who never caused others to die seldom rates a statue.
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
You know there are no secrets in America. It's quite different in England, where people think of a secret as a shared relation between two people.
W. H. Auden
All wishes, whatever their apparent content, have the same and unvarying meaning: I refuse to be what I am.
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The slogan of Hell: Eat or be eaten. The slogan of Heaven: Eat and be eaten.
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In times of joy, all of us wished we possessed a tail we could wag.
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Death is the sound of distant thunder at a picnic.
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Time will say nothing but I told you so.
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A writer is a maker, not a man of action: his private life is of no concern to anybody but himself, his family and his friends.
W. H. Auden
Oh, how I wish that Orwell were still alive, so that I could read his comments on contemporary events!
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Cathedrals, luxury liners laden with souls, Holding to the east their hulls of stone.
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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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What we have not named as a symbol escapes our notice.
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The only reason the Protestants and Catholics have given up the idea of universal domination is because they've realised they can't get away with it.
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Why doesn't the United States take over the monarchy and unite with England? England does have important assets. Naturally the longer you wait, the more they will dwindle. At least you could use it for a summer resort instead of Maine.
W. H. Auden
There's always another story. There's more than meets the eye.
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You need not see what someone is doing to know if it is his vocation, you have only to watch his eyes: a cook mixing a sauce, a surgeon making a primary incision, a clerk completing a bill of lading wear the same rapt expression, forgetting themselves in a function. How beautiful it is, that eye-on-the-obje ct look.
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What the poet says has never been said before, but, once he has said it, his readers recognize its validity for themselves.
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Politics cannot be a science, because in politics theory and practice cannot be separated, and the sciences depend upon their separation.
W. H. Auden
The most difficult problem in personal knowledge, whether of oneself or of others, is the problem of guessing when to think as a historian and when to think as an anthropologist.
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All sins tend to be addictive, and the terminal point of addiction is damnation.
W. H. Auden
Let me see what I wrote so I know what I think
W. H. Auden