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But once in a while the odd thing happens Once in a while the dream comes true And the whole pattern of life is altered Once in a while, the moon turns blue

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
True
Altered
Happens
Odd
Dream
Pattern
Whole
Patterns
Thing
Blue
Life
Moon
Turns
Comes

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If the most significant characteristic of man is the complex of biological needs he shares with all members of his species, then the best lives for the writer to observe are those in which the role of natural necessity is clearest, namely, the lives of the very poor.
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Anyone who has a child today should train him to be either a physicist or a ballet dancer. Then he'll escape.
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I think the first prerequisite to civilization is an ability to make polite conversation.
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To have a sense of sin means to feel guilty at there being an ethical choice to make, a guilt which, however good I may become, remains unchanged.
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The nightingales are sobbing in The orchards of our mothers, And hearts that we broke long ago Have long been breaking others Tears are round, the sea is deep: Roll them overboard and sleep.
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The most exciting rhythms seem unexpected and complex, the most beautiful melodies simple and inevitable.
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Let me see what I wrote so I know what I think
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About suffering they were never wrong, The Old Masters How well they understood Its human position how it takes place While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along.
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Pleasure is by no means an infallible critical guide, but it is the least fallible.
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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.
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Left to itself the masculine imagination has very little appreciation for the here and now it prefers to dwell on what is absent, on what has been or may be. If men are more punctual than women, it is because they know that, without the external discipline of clock time, they would never get anything done.
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The habit-forming pain, Mismanagement and grief: We must suffer them all again.
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A false enchantment can all too easily last a lifetime.
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The stars are dead. The animals will not look: We are left alone with our day, and the time is short, and History to the defeated May say Alas but cannot help nor pardon.
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Every high C accurately struck demolishes the theory that we are the irresponsible puppets of fate or chance.
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Look if you like, but you will have to leap.
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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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I used to try and concentrate the poem so much that there wasn't a word that wasn't essential. This leads to becoming boring and constipated.
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What answer to the meaning of existence should one require beyond the right to exercise one's gifts?
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Of all possible subjects, travel is the most difficult for an artist, as it is the easiest for a journalist.
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