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Political history is far too criminal to be a fit subject of study for the young. Children should acquire their heroes and villians from fiction.

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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August for the people and their favourite islands. Daily the steamers sidle up to meet The effusive welcome of the pier.
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Follow, poet, follow right To the bottom of the night, With your unconstraining voice Still persuade us to rejoice With the farming of a verse Make a vineyard of the curse, Sing of human unsuccess In a rapture of distress In the deserts of the heart Let the healing fountain start, In the prison of his days Teach the free man how to praise.
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Words have no word for words that are not true.
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'Healing,' Papa would tell me, 'is not a science, but the intuitive art of wooing nature.'
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What the mass media offers is not popular art, but entertainment which is intended to be consumed like food, forgotten, and replaced by a new dish.
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Before people complain of the obscurity of modern poetry, they should first examine their consciences and ask themselves with how many people and on how many occasions they have genuinely and profoundly shared some experience with another...
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There's always another story. There's more than meets the eye.
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One can only blaspheme if one believes.
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A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.
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Whatever the field under discussion, those who engage in debate must not only believe in each other's good faith, but also in their capacity to arrive at the truth.
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Between friends differences in taste or opinion are irritating in direct proportion to their triviality.
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I said earlier that I do not believe an artist's life throws much light upon his works. I do believe, however, that, more often than most people realize, his works may throw light upon his life. An artist with certain imaginative ideas in his head may then involve himself in relationships which are congenial to them.
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Nobody is ever sent to Hell: he or she insists on going there.
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Out on the lawn I lie in bed, Vega conspicuous overhead.
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Our claim to our own bodies and our world is our catastrophe.
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All I have is a voice.
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To have a sense of sin means to feel guilty at there being an ethical choice to make, a guilt which, however good I may become, remains unchanged.
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Earth, receive an honored guest William Yeats is laid to rest. Let the Irish vessel lie Emptied of its poetry.
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It is, for example, axiomatic that we should all think of ourselves as being more sensitive than other people because, when we are insensitive in our dealings with others, we cannot be aware of it at the time: conscious insensitivity is a self-contradiction.
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