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See without looking, hear without listening, breathe without asking.

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
Philosophical
Breathe
Asking
Listening
Hear
Looking
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More quotes by W. H. Auden

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Whatever the field under discussion, those who engage in debate must not only believe in each other's good faith, but also in their capacity to arrive at the truth.
W. H. Auden
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In the eyes of others a man is a poet if he has written one good poem. In his own he is only a poet at the moment when he is making his last revision to a new poem. The moment before, he was still only a potential poet the moment after, he is a man who has ceased to write poetry, perhaps forever.
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Those to whom evil is doneDo evil in return.
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The class distinctions proper to a democratic society are not those of rank or money, still less, as is apt to happen when these are abandoned, of race, but of age.
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Money cannot buy the fuel of love but is excellent kindling.
W. H. Auden
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You will be a poet because you will always be humiliated.
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All works of art are commissioned in the sense that no artist can create one by a simple act of will but must wait until what he believes to be a good idea for a work comes to him.
W. H. Auden
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Health is the state about which medicine has nothing to say.
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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.
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No human being is innocent, but there is a class of innocent human actions called Games.
W. H. Auden
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The truly tragic kind of suffering is the kind produced and defiantly insisted upon by the hero himself so that, instead of making him better, it makes him worse and when he dies he is not reconciled to the law but defiant, that is, damned. Lear is not a tragic hero, Othello is.
W. H. Auden
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In a world of prayer, we are all equal in the sense that each of us is a unique person, with a unique perspective on the world, a member of a class of one.
W. H. Auden
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Human language is mythological and metaphorical by nature.
W. H. Auden
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Dance, dance, dance till you drop.
W. H. Auden
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Happy the hare at morning, for she cannot read The hunter's waking thoughts.
W. H. Auden
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The slogan of Hell: Eat or be eaten. The slogan of Heaven: Eat and be eaten.
W. H. Auden
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No being can make another one happy.
W. H. Auden
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Organic growth is a cyclical process it is just as true to say that the oak is a potential acorn as it is to say the acorn is a potential oak. But the process of writing a poem, of making any art object, is not cyclical but a motion in one direction toward a definite end.
W. H. Auden
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The critical opinions of a writer should always be taken with a large grain of salt. For the most part, they are manifestations of his debate with himself as to what he should do next and what he should avoid.
W. H. Auden
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The closest modern equivalent to the Homeric hero is the ace fighter pilot.
W. H. Auden