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America has always been a country of amateurs where the professional, that is to say, the man who claims authority as a member of an élite which knows the law in some field or other, is an object of distrust and resentment.

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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Weep for the lives your wishes never led.
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The friends who met here and embraced are gone, Each to his own mistake.
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The primary function of poetry, as of all the arts, is to make us more aware of ourselves and the world around us. I do not know if such increased awareness makes us more moral or more efficient. I hope not. I think it makes us more human, and I am quite certain it makes us more difficult to deceive.
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There has been a vast output of critical studies in contemporary poetry, some of them first rate, but I do not think that , as a rule, a poet should read them.
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Lost in a haunted wood, Children afraid of the night Who have never been happy or good.
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A dead man who never caused others to die seldom rates a statue.
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Poetry is the only art people haven't learned to consume like soup.
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The relation of faith between subject and object is unique in every case. Hundreds may believe, but each has to believe by himself.
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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.
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God is Love, we are taught as children to believe. But when we first begin to get some inkling of how He loves us, we are repelled it seems so cold, indeed, not love at all as we understand the word.
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No being can make another one happy.
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The countenances of children, like those of animals, are masks, not faces, for they have not yet developed a significant profile of their own.
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May it not be that, just as we have to have faith in Him, God has to have faith in us and, considering the history of the human race so far, may it not be that 'faith' is even more difficult for Him than it is for us?
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Herds of reindeer move across Miles and miles of golden moss
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The true men of action in our time, those who transform the world, are not the politicians and statesmen, but the scientists
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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.
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The most important truths are likely to be those which society at that time least wants to hear.
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We till shadowed days are done, We must weep and sing Duty's conscious wrong, The Devil in the clock
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Those who hate to go to bed fear death those who hate to get up fear life.
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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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