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Slavery is so intolerable a condition that the slave can hardly escape deluding himself into thinking that he is choosing to obey his master's commands when, in fact, he is obliged to. Most slaves of habit suffer from this delusion and so do some writers, enslaved by an all too personal style.

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 Critic
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Wystan Hugh Auden
Wystan Auden
Wystan H Auden
W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
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Obey

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Thank God for books as an alternative to conversation.
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Fame often makes a writer vain, but seldom makes him proud.
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Sob, heavy world Sob as you spin, Mantled in mist Remote from the happy.
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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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The most exciting rhythms seem unexpected and complex, the most beautiful melodies simple and inevitable.
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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.
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Poetry might be defined as the clear expression of mixed feelings.
W. H. Auden
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All the literati keep An imaginary friend.
W. H. Auden
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A daydream is a meal at which images are eaten. Some of us are gourmets, some gourmands, and a good many take their images precooked out of a can and swallow them down whole, absent-mindedly and with little relish.
W. H. Auden
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I'll love you till the ocean Is folded and hung up to dry And the seven stars go squawking Like geese about the sky.
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Moreover, if great men are the only hope of the Evolutionary Process, they are morally bound to rule over the masses for their own good -- we are all here on earth to help others: what on earth the others are here for, I don't know -- and the masses have no right whatsoever to resist them.
W. H. Auden
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Dance, dance, dance till you drop.
W. H. Auden
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Art is our chief means of breaking bread with the dead.
W. H. Auden
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As a rule, it was the pleasure-haters who became unjust.
W. H. Auden
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You will be a poet because you will always be humiliated.
W. H. Auden
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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.
W. H. Auden
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Yet no one hears his own remarks as prose.
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Our claim to our own bodies and our world is our catastrophe.
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And make us as Newton was, who in his garden watching The apple falling towards England, became aware Between himself and her of an eternal tie.
W. H. Auden
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As biological organisms made of matter, we are subject to the laws of physics and biology: as conscious persons who create our own history we are free to decide what that history shall be. Without science, we should have no notion of equality without art, no notion of liberty.
W. H. Auden