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Fate succumbs many a species: one alone jeopardises itself.

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
Many
Life
Succumbs
Species
Fate
Alone

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A poet is a professional maker of verbal objects.
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I just try to put the thing out and hope somebody will read it. Someone says: 'Whom do you write for?' I reply: 'Do you read me?' If they say 'Yes,' I say, 'Do you like it?' If they say 'No,' then I say, 'I don't write for you.'
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Murder is unique in that it abolishes the party it injures, so that society has to take the place of the victim and on his behalf demand atonement or grant forgiveness it is the one crime in which society has a direct interest.
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To be free is often to be lonely.
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Over the tea-cups and in the square the tongue has its desire Still waters run deep, my dear, there's never smoke without fire.
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August for the people and their favourite islands. Daily the steamers sidle up to meet The effusive welcome of the pier.
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Civilizations should be measured by the degree of diversity attained and the degree of unity retained.
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Cats can be very funny, and have the oddest ways of showing they're glad to see you.
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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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A verbal art like poetry is reflective it stops to think. Music is immediate, it goes on to become.
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I and the public know What all schoolchildren learn, Those to whom evil is done Do evil in return.
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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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A poet, qua poet, has only one political duty, namely, in his own writing to set an example of the correct use of his mother tongue, which is always being corrupted. When words lose their meaning, physical force takes over.
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The poet marries the language, and out of this marriage the poem is born.
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To save your world you asked this man to die would this man, could he see you now, ask why?
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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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We who must die demand a miracle. How could the Eternal do a temporal act, The Infinite become a finite fact? Nothing can save us that is possible: We who must die demand a miracle.
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A poet feels the impulse to create a work of art when the passive awe provoked by an event is transformed into a desire to express that awe in a rite of worship.
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From beginning to end Wilde performed his life and continued to do so even after fame had taken the plot out of his own hands.
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Poetry is the only art people haven't learned to consume like soup.
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