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My deepest feeling about politicians is that they are dangerous lunatics to be avoided when possible and carefully humored people, above all, to whom one must never tell the truth.
W. H. Auden
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W. H. Auden
Age: 66 †
Born: 1907
Born: February 21
Died: 1973
Died: September 28
Author
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Essayist
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Literary Critic
Literary Historian
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University Teacher
Writer
Jórvík
Wystan Hugh Auden
Wystan Auden
Wystan H Auden
W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
Truth
Politicians
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Never
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Feeling
Humored
Possible
Lunatics
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Avoided
Feelings
Carefully
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Deepest
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Without Art, we should have no notion of the sacred without Science, we should always worship false gods.
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The camera may do justice to laughter, but must degrade sorrow.
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A poet can write about a man slaying a dragon, but not about a man pushing a button that releases a bomb.
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Language is the mother, not the handmaiden, of thought words will tell you things you never thought or felt before.
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the child unlucky in his little State, Some hearth where freedom is excluded, A hive whose honey is fear and worry, Feels calmer now and somehow assured of escape
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Now the leaves are falling fast, Nurse's flowers will not last Nurses to their graves are gone, And the prams go rolling on.
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You must go to bed with friends or whores, where money makes up the difference in beauty or desire.
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I said earlier that I do not believe an artist's life throws much light upon his works. I do believe, however, that, more often than most people realize, his works may throw light upon his life. An artist with certain imaginative ideas in his head may then involve himself in relationships which are congenial to them.
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It's frightening how easy it is to commit murder in America. Just a drink too much. I can see myself doing it. In England, one feels all the social restraints holding one back. But here, anything can happen.
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Machines are beneficial to the degree that they eliminate the need for labor, harmful to the degree that they eliminate the need for skill.
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It is, for example, axiomatic that we should all think of ourselves as being more sensitive than other people because, when we are insensitive in our dealings with others, we cannot be aware of it at the time: conscious insensitivity is a self-contradiction.
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There are three cardinal rules - don't take somebody else's boyfriend unless you've been specifically invited to do so, don't take a drink without being asked, and keep a scrupulous accounting in financial matters.
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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.
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Music is the best means we have of digesting time.
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As a poet, there is only one political duty, and that is to defend one's language from corruption.
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Geniuses are the luckiest of mortals because what they must do is the same as what they most want to do.
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Ideally, government is the means by which all the individual wills are assured complete freedom of moral choice and at the same time prevented from ever clashing.
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And none will hear the postman’s knock Without a quickening of the heart. For who can bear to feel himself forgotten?
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