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The only reason the Protestants and Catholics have given up the idea of universal domination is because they've realised they can't get away with it.

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
Librettist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Playwright
Poet
Screenwriter
University Teacher
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Jórvík
Wystan Hugh Auden
Wystan Auden
Wystan H Auden
W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
Universal
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Catholics
Given
Protestants
Away
Realised
Ideas
Domination
Reason
Catholic
Atheism

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The chances are that, in the course of his lifetime, the major poet will write more bad poems than the minor, simply because major poets write a lot.
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How should we like it were stars to burn With a passion for us we could not return? If equal affection cannot be, Let the more loving one be me.
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Adjectives are the potbelly of poetry.
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In the deserts of the heart Let the healing fountain start.
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A craftsman knows in advance what the finished result will be, while the artist knows only what it will be when he has finished it.
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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.
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My poetry doesn't change from place to place - it changes with the years. It's very important to be one's age. You get ideas you have to turn down - 'I'm sorry, no longer' 'I'm sorry, not yet.
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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.'
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To be happy means to be free, not from pain or fear, but from care or anxiety.
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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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The poet marries the language, and out of this marriage the poem is born.
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All pity is self-pity.
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You know there are no secrets in America. It's quite different in England, where people think of a secret as a shared relation between two people.
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I will love you forever swears the poet. I find this easy to swear too. I will love you at 4:15 pm next Tuesday - Is that still as easy?
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The older lives like not to be stood in rows or at right angles.
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Goodness is easier to recognize than to define.
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I'm always amazed at the American practice of allowing one party to a homosexual act to remain passive--it's so undemocratic. Sexmust be mutual.
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Oh, how I wish that Orwell were still alive, so that I could read his comments on contemporary events!
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One of the most horrible, yet most important, discoveries of our age has been that, if you really wish to destroy a person and turn him into an automaton, the surest method is not physical torture, in the strict sense, but simply to keep him awake, i.e., in an existential relation to life without intermission.
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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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