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All that we are not stares back at what we are.
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
Narcissus does not fall in love with his reflection because it is beautiful, but because it is his. If it were his beauty that enthralled him, he would be set free in a few years by its fading.
W. H. Auden
To read is to translate, for no two persons' experiences are the same. A bad reader is like a bad translator: he interprets literally when he ought to paraphrase and paraphrases when he ought to interpret literally.
W. H. Auden
We are lived by powers we pretend to understand.
W. H. Auden
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
See without looking, hear without listening, breathe without asking.
W. H. Auden
Without communication with the dead, a fully human life is not possible.
W. H. Auden
Without Art, we should have no notion of the sacred without Science, we should always worship false gods.
W. H. Auden
My poetry doesn't change from place to place - it changes with the years. It's very important to be one's age. You get ideas you have to turn down - 'I'm sorry, no longer' 'I'm sorry, not yet.
W. H. Auden
Does God judge us by appearances? I Suspect that He does.
W. H. Auden
Clear, unscaleable ahead, Rise the mountains of instead From whose cold, cascading streams None may drink except in dreams
W. H. Auden
Sincerity is technique.
W. H. Auden
Sob, heavy world Sob as you spin, Mantled in mist Remote from the happy.
W. H. Auden
Oh, how I wish that Orwell were still alive, so that I could read his comments on contemporary events!
W. H. Auden
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.
W. H. Auden
Hunger allows no choice.
W. H. Auden
The stars are dead. The animals will not look: We are left alone with our day, and the time is short, and History to the defeated May say Alas but cannot help nor pardon.
W. H. Auden
Poetry makes nothing happen.
W. H. Auden
I know nothing, except what everyone knows - if there when Grace dances, I should dance.
W. H. Auden
Good can imagine Evil but Evil cannot imagine Good.
W. H. Auden
Most people call something profound, not because it is near some important truth but because it is distant from ordinary life. Thus, darkness is profound to the eye, silence to the ear what-is-not is the profundity of what-is.
W. H. Auden
