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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

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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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Art is born of humiliation.
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Health is the state about which medicine has nothing to say.
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The class distinctions proper to a democratic society are not those of rank or money, still less, as is apt to happen when these are abandoned, of race, but of age.
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No poet or novelist wishes he were the only one who ever lived, but most of them wish they were the only one alive, and quite a number fondly believe their wish has been granted.
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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.
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One of the most horrible, yet most important, discoveries of our age has been that, if you really wish to destroy a person and turn him into an automaton, the surest method is not physical torture, in the strict sense, but simply to keep him awake, i.e., in an existential relation to life without intermission.
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Aside from purely technical analysis, nothing can be said about music, except when it is bad when it is good, one can only listen and be grateful.
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Alone, alone, about the dreadful wood / Of conscious evil runs a lost mankind, / Dreading to find its Father.
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Caesar's double-bed is warm As an unimportant clerk Writes i do not like my work On a pink official form.
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Adjectives are the potbelly of poetry.
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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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The ear tends to be lazy, craves the familiar and is shocked by the unexpected the eye, on the other hand, tends to be impatient, craves the novel and is bored by repetition.
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In the eyes of others a man is a poet if he has written one good poem. In his own he is only a poet at the moment when he is making his last revision to a new poem. The moment before, he was still only a potential poet the moment after, he is a man who has ceased to write poetry, perhaps forever.
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The basic stimulus to the intelligence is doubt, a feeling that the meaning of an experience is not self-evident.
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Detective stories have nothing to do with works of art.
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Human language is mythological and metaphorical by nature.
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The slogan of Hell: Eat or be eaten. The slogan of Heaven: Eat and be eaten.
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Lay your sleeping head, my love, Human on my faithless arm.
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I'm always amazed at the American practice of allowing one party to a homosexual act to remain passive--it's so undemocratic. Sexmust be mutual.
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Rhymes, meters, stanza forms, etc., are like servants. If the master is fair enough to win their affection and firm enough to command their respect, the result is an orderly happy household. If he is too tyrannical, they give notice if he lacks authority, they become slovenly, impertinent, drunk and dishonest.
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