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Goodness is easier to recognize than to define.

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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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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Murder is commoner among cooks than among members of any other profession.
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Though one cannot always Remember exactly why one has been happy, There is no forgetting that one was.
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I and the public know What all schoolchildren learn, Those to whom evil is done Do evil in return.
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What living occasion can, Be just to the absent?
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Encased in talent like a uniform, The rank of every poet is well known They can amaze us like a thunderstorm, Or die so young, or live for years alone.
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The windiest militant trash Important Persons shout Is not so crude as our wish: What mad Nijinsky wrote About Diaghilev Is true of the normal heart For the error bred in the bone Of each woman and each man Craves what it cannot have Not universal love But to be loved alone.
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We are not commanded (or forbidden) to love our mates, our children, our friends, our country because such affections come naturally to us and are good in themselves, although we may corrupt them. We are commanded to love our neighbor because our natural attitude toward the other is one of either indifference or hostility.
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With the farming of a verse Make a vineyard of the curse
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Beauty, midnight, vision dies: Let the winds of dawn that blow Softly round your dreaming head Such a day of welcome show Eye and knocking heart may bless, Find our mortal world enough Noons of dryness find you fed By the involuntary powers, Nights of insult let you pass Watched by every human love.
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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
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Few people take an interest in Iceland, but in those few the interest is passionate.
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Desire, even in its wildest tantrums, can neither persuade me it is love nor stop me from wishing it were.
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Yet no one hears his own remarks as prose.
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