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Words are for those with promises to keep.
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
The lights must never go out, The music must always play
W. H. Auden
See without looking, hear without listening, breathe without asking.
W. H. Auden
The primary function of poetry, as of all the arts, is to make us more aware of ourselves and the world around us. I do not know if such increased awareness makes us more moral or more efficient. I hope not. I think it makes us more human, and I am quite certain it makes us more difficult to deceive.
W. H. Auden
A dead man who never caused others to die seldom rates a statue.
W. H. Auden
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.
W. H. Auden
Love each other or perish.
W. H. Auden
We till shadowed days are done, We must weep and sing Duty's conscious wrong, The Devil in the clock
W. H. Auden
Anyone who has a child today should train him to be either a physicist or a ballet dancer. Then he'll escape.
W. H. Auden
To pray is to pay attention to something or someone other than oneself.
W. H. Auden
Thou shalt not answer questionnaires Or quizzes upon world affairs, Nor with compliance Take any test. Thou shalt not sit with statisticians nor commit A social science.
W. H. Auden
To make one, there must be two.
W. H. Auden
A man is a form of life that dreams in order to act and acts in order to dream.
W. H. Auden
The trees encountered on a country stroll Reveal a lot about that country's soul ... A culture is no better than its woods.
W. H. Auden
The most important truths are likely to be those which society at that time least wants to hear.
W. H. Auden
Political history is far too criminal to be a fit subject of study for the young. Children should acquire their heroes and villians from fiction.
W. H. Auden
We would rather be ruined than changed. We would rather die in our dread than climb the cross of the moment and let our illusions die.
W. H. Auden
Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can: all of them make me laugh.
W. H. Auden
I see little hope for a peaceful world until men are excluded from the realm of foreign policy altogether and all decisions concerning international relations are reserved for women, preferably married ones.
W. H. Auden
In a land which is fully settled, most men must accept their local environment or try to change it by political means only the exceptionally gifted or adventurous can leave to seek his fortune elsewhere. In America, on the other hand, to move on and make a fresh start somewhere else is still the normal reaction to dissatisfaction and failure.
W. H. Auden
A person incapable of imaging another world than given to him by his senses would be subhuman, and a person who identifies his imaginary world with the world of sensory fact has become insane.
W. H. Auden
