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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
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University Teacher
Writer
Jórvík
Wystan Hugh Auden
Wystan Auden
Wystan H Auden
W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
Listening
Hear
Looking
Without
Philosophical
Breathe
Asking

More quotes by W. H. Auden

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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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To make one, there must be two.
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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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The windiest militant trash Important Persons shout Is not so crude as our wish: What mad Nijinsky wrote About Diaghilev Is true of the normal heart For the error bred in the bone Of each woman and each man Craves what it cannot have Not universal love But to be loved alone.
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The commonest ivory tower is that of the average man, the state of passivity towards experience.
W. H. Auden
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But if a stranger in the train asks me my occupation, I never answer writer for fear that he may go on to ask me what I write, and to answer poetry would embarrass us both, for we both know that nobody can earn a living simply by writing poetry.
W. H. Auden
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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?
W. H. Auden
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A poet can write about a man slaying a dragon, but not about a man pushing a button that releases a bomb.
W. H. Auden
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Dogmatic theological statements are neither logical propositions nor poetic utterances. They are ''shaggy dog'' stories they have a point, but he who tries too hard to get it will miss it.
W. H. Auden
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Geniuses are the luckiest of mortals because what they must do is the same as what they most want to do.
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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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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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
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Precisely because we do not communicate by singing, a song can be out of place but not out of character it is just as credible that a stupid person should sing beautifully as that a clever person should do so.
W. H. Auden
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All good art is in the nature of a letter written to amuse a sick friend. Too much art, particularly in our time, is only a letter written to oneself.
W. H. Auden
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In a game, just losing is almost as satisfying as just winning... In life the loser's score is always zero.
W. H. Auden
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We till shadowed days are done, We must weep and sing Duty's conscious wrong, The Devil in the clock
W. H. Auden
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Say this city has ten million souls, Some are living in mansions, some are living in holes: Yet there’s no place for us, my dear, yet there’s no place for us.
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a culture is no better than its woods
W. H. Auden
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What living occasion can, Be just to the absent?
W. H. Auden