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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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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
Caesar's double-bed is warm As an unimportant clerk Writes i do not like my work On a pink official form.
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Few can remember clearly when innocence came to a sudden end, the moment at which we ask for the first time: Am I loved?
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Our sufferings and weaknesses, in so far as they are personal, are of no literary interest whatsoever. They are only interesting in so far as we can see them as typical of the human condition.
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Every man carries with him through life a mirror, as unique and impossible to get rid of as his shadow.
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O plunge your hands in water, Plunge them in up to the wrist Stare, stare in the basin And wonder what you've missed.
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I don't think the mystical experience can be verbalized. When the ego disappears, so does power over language.
W. H. Auden
Young people, who are still uncertain of their identity, often try on a succession of masks in the hope of finding the one which suits them - the one, in fact, which is not a mask.
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It is a sad fact about our culture that a poet can earn much more money writing or talking about his art than he can by practicing it.
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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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Dance, dance, dance till you drop.
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Politics cannot be a science, because in politics theory and practice cannot be separated, and the sciences depend upon their separation.
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A dead man who never caused others to die seldom rates a statue.
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Attacking bad books is not only a waste of time but also bad for the character. If I find a book really bad, the only interest I can derive from writing about it has to come from myself, from such display of intelligence, wit and malice as I can contrive. One cannot review a bad book without showing off.
W. H. Auden
Evil is unspectacular and always human, and shares our bed and eats at our own table.
W. H. Auden
The ear tends to be lazy, craves the familiar and is shocked by the unexpected the eye, on the other hand, tends to be impatient, craves the novel and is bored by repetition.
W. H. Auden
In addition to English, at least one ancient language, probably Greek or Hebrew, and two modern languages would be required.
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All I have is a voice to undo the folded lie, the romantic lie in the brain of the sensual man-in-the-street and the lie of Authority whose buildings grope the sky: There is no such thing as the State and no one exists alone Hunger allows no choice to the citizen or the police We must love one another or die.
W. H. Auden
The most difficult problem in personal knowledge, whether of oneself or of others, is the problem of guessing when to think as a historian and when to think as an anthropologist.
W. H. Auden
'Healing,' Papa would tell me, 'is not a science, but the intuitive art of wooing nature.'
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The camera may do justice to laughter, but must degrade sorrow.
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