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One of the troubles of our times is that we are all, I think, precocious as personalities and backward as characters.
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
A man is a form of life that dreams in order to act and acts in order to dream.
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Far from his illness The wolves ran on through the evergreen forests, The peasant river was untempted by the fashionable quays By mourning tongues The death of the poet was kept from his poems.
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My face looks like a wedding-cake left out in the rain.
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The trees encountered on a country stroll Reveal a lot about that country's soul ... A culture is no better than its woods.
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There is a certain kind of person who is so dominated by the desire to be loved for himself alone that he has constantly to test those around him by tiresome behavior what he says and does must be admired, not because it is intrinsically admirable, but because it is his remark, his act. Does not this explain a good deal of avant-garde art?
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Civilizations should be measured by the degree of diversity attained and the degree of unity retained.
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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.
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A craftsman knows in advance what the finished result will be, while the artist knows only what it will be when he has finished it.
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Lost in a haunted wood, Children afraid of the night Who have never been happy or good.
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Christmas and Easter can be subjects for poetry, but Good Friday, like Auschwitz, cannot. The reality is so horrible it is not surprising that people should have found it a stumbling block to faith.
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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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Sob, heavy world Sob as you spin, Mantled in mist Remote from the happy.
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Proper names are poetry in the raw. Like all poetry they are untranslatable.
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Lay your sleeping head, my love, Human on my faithless arm.
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There is no such thing as the State And no one exists alone Hunger allows no choice To the citizen or the police We must love one another or die.
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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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In a land which is fully settled, most men must accept their local environment or try to change it by political means only the exceptionally gifted or adventurous can leave to seek his fortune elsewhere. In America, on the other hand, to move on and make a fresh start somewhere else is still the normal reaction to dissatisfaction and failure.
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A poem is a verbal artifact which must be as skillfully and solidly constructed as a table or a motorcycle.
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Fame often makes a writer vain, but seldom makes him proud.
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The poet who writes free verse is like Robinson Crusoe on his desert island: he must do all his cooking, laundry and darning for himself. In a few exceptional cases, this manly independence produces something original and impressive, but more often the result is squalor - dirty sheets on the unmade bed and empty bottles on the unswept floor.
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