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a culture is no better than its woods

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
Woods
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Nature
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Lay your sleeping head, my love, Human on my faithless arm.
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The most exciting rhythms seem unexpected and complex, the most beautiful melodies simple and inevitable.
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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.
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Man is a history-making creature, who can neither repeat his past, nor leave it behind.
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Alone, alone, about the dreadful wood / Of conscious evil runs a lost mankind, / Dreading to find its Father.
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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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O plunge your hands in water, Plunge them in up to the wrist Stare, stare in the basin And wonder what you've missed.
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Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.
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No human being is innocent, but there is a class of innocent human actions called Games.
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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.
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Attacking bad books is not only a waste of time but also bad for the character. If I find a book really bad, the only interest I can derive from writing about it has to come from myself, from such display of intelligence, wit and malice as I can contrive. One cannot review a bad book without showing off.
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Does God judge us by appearances? I Suspect that He does.
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The sky is darkening like a stain Something is going to fall like rain And it won't be flowers
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A professor is someone who talks in someone else's sleep.
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History marched to the drums of a clear idea...
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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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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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Dance till the stars come down from the rafters Dance, Dance, Dance 'till you drop.
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