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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.'

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

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We are all here on earth to help others what on earth the others are here for I don't know.
W. H. Auden
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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.
W. H. Auden
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It's usually the stupid people that develop long illnesses. You need more than indolence and selfishness, you need endurance to make a good patient.
W. H. Auden
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My face looks like a wedding-cake left out in the rain.
W. H. Auden
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Encased in talent like a uniform, The rank of every poet is well known They can amaze us like a thunderstorm, Or die so young, or live for years alone.
W. H. Auden
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What the poet says has never been said before, but, once he has said it, his readers recognize its validity for themselves.
W. H. Auden
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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.
W. H. Auden
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All I have is a voice.
W. H. Auden
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He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.
W. H. Auden
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The law cannot forgive, for the law has not been wronged, only broken only persons can be wronged. The law can pardon, but it can only pardon what it has the power to punish.
W. H. Auden
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You will be a poet because you will always be humiliated.
W. H. Auden
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One cannot walk through an assembly factory and not feel that one is in Hell.
W. H. Auden
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The definition of prayer is paying careful and concentrated attention to something other than your own constructions.
W. H. Auden
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Learn from your dreams what you lack.
W. H. Auden
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Great art is clear thinking about mixed feelings.
W. H. Auden
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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
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Those who hate to go to bed fear death those who hate to get up fear life.
W. H. Auden
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Music is the best means we have of digesting time.
W. H. Auden
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America has always been a country of amateurs where the professional, that is to say, the man who claims authority as a member of an élite which knows the law in some field or other, is an object of distrust and resentment.
W. H. Auden
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We must love one another or die
W. H. Auden