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To make one, there must be two.
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
Pleasure is by no means an infallible critical guide, but it is the least fallible.
W. H. Auden
The desires of the heart are as crooked as corkscrews Not to be born is the best for man The second best is a formal order The dance's pattern, dance while you can. Dance, dance, for the figure is easy The tune is catching and will not stop Dance till the stars come down from the rafters Dance, dance, dance till you drop.
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.
W. H. Auden
We do not change as we grow up. The difference between the child and the adult is that the former doesn't know who he is and the latter does.
W. H. Auden
In the deserts of the heart Let the healing fountain start.
W. H. Auden
The poet marries the language, and out of this marriage the poem is born.
W. H. Auden
We honor founders of these starving cities, Whose honor is the image of our sorrow.
W. H. Auden
The Ogre does what ogres can, Deeds quite impossible for Man, But one prize is beyond his reach, The Ogre cannot master Speech: About a subjugated plain, Among its desperate and slain, The Ogre stalks with hands on hips, While drivel gushes from his lips.
W. H. Auden
Doom is dark and deeper than any sea-dingle.
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
Like love we don't know where or why Like love we cant compel or fly Like Love we often weep Like Love we seldom keep
W. H. Auden
You shall love your crooked neighbour, with your crooked heart.
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
Goodness is easier to recognize than to define.
W. H. Auden
I used to try and concentrate the poem so much that there wasn't a word that wasn't essential. This leads to becoming boring and constipated.
W. H. Auden
When I am in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a drawing room full of dukes.
W. H. Auden
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.
W. H. Auden
To hunt for symbols in a fairy tale is absolutely fatal.
W. H. Auden
When one looks into the window of a store which sells devotional art objects, one can't help wishing the iconoclasts had won.
W. H. Auden
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.
W. H. Auden