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Precisely because we do not communicate by singing, a song can be out of place but not out of character it is just as credible that a stupid person should sing beautifully as that a clever person should do so.

W. H. Auden

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W. H. Auden
Age: 66 †
Born: 1907
Born: February 21
Died: 1973
Died: September 28
Author
Composer
Essayist
Librettist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Playwright
Poet
Screenwriter
University Teacher
Writer
Jórvík
Wystan Hugh Auden
Wystan Auden
Wystan H Auden
W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
Person
Communicate
Sing
Singing
Stupid
Song
Credible
Place
Beautifully
Character
Precisely
Persons
Clever

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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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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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God is Love, we are taught as children to believe. But when we first begin to get some inkling of how He loves us, we are repelled it seems so cold, indeed, not love at all as we understand the word.
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In headaches and in worry Vaguely life leaks away, And Time will have his fancy To-morrow or today.
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All the rest is silence On the other side of the wall, And the silence ripeness, And the ripeness all.
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Money cannot buy the fuel of love but is excellent kindling.
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Our claim to our own bodies and our world is our catastrophe.
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History marched to the drums of a clear idea...
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No human being is innocent, but there is a class of innocent human actions called Games.
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We were put on this Earth to help others. Why others were put here is beyond me.
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Courses in prosody, rhetoric and comparative philology would be required of all students, and every student would have to select three courses out of courses in mathematics, natural history, geology, meteorology, archaeology, mythology, liturgics, cooking.
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To ask the hard question is simple.
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One cannot walk through an assembly factory and not feel that one is in Hell.
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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.
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Defenceless under the night Our world in stupor lies Yet, dotted everywhere, Ironic points of light Flash out wherever the Just Exchange their messages: May I, composed like them Of Eros and of dust, Beleaguered by the same Negation and despair, Show an affirming flame.
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I will love you forever swears the poet. I find this easy to swear too. I will love you at 4:15 pm next Tuesday - Is that still as easy?
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It takes little talent to see what lies under one's nose, a good deal to know in what direction to point that organ.
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The older lives like not to be stood in rows or at right angles.
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History is, strictly speaking, the study of questions the study of answers belongs to anthropology and sociology.
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Evil is unspectacular and always human, and shares our bed and eats at our own table.
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