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A man has his distinctive personal scent which his wife, his children and his dog can recognize. A crowd has a generalized stink. The public is odorless.
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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Jórvík
Wystan Hugh Auden
Wystan Auden
Wystan H Auden
W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
Wife
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Men
Crowds
Smell
Recognize
Dog
Generalized
Personal
Stink
More quotes by W. H. Auden
To my generation no other English poet seemed so perfectly to express the sensibility of a male adolescent. If I do not now turn to him very often, I am eternally grateful to him for the joy he gave me in my youth.
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If we really want to live, we'd better start at once to try.
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Like love we don't know where or why Like love we cant compel or fly Like Love we often weep Like Love we seldom keep
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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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Those who will not reason, perish in the act. Those who will not act, perish for that reason.
W. H. Auden
A writer is a maker, not a man of action: his private life is of no concern to anybody but himself, his family and his friends.
W. H. Auden
To read is to translate, for no two persons' experiences are the same. A bad reader is like a bad translator: he interprets literally when he ought to paraphrase and paraphrases when he ought to interpret literally.
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Every American poet feels that the whole responsibility for contemporary poetry has fallen upon his shoulders, that he is a literary aristocracy of one.
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All pity is self-pity.
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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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Art is born of humiliation.
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As a poet, there is only one political duty, and that is to defend one's language from corruption.
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To save your world you asked this man to die would this man, could he see you now, ask why?
W. H. Auden
Thou shalt not answer questionnaires Or quizzes upon world affairs, Nor with compliance Take any test. Thou shalt not sit with statisticians nor commit A social science.
W. H. Auden
From beginning to end Wilde performed his life and continued to do so even after fame had taken the plot out of his own hands.
W. H. Auden
Narcissus does not fall in love with his reflection because it is beautiful, but because it is his. If it were his beauty that enthralled him, he would be set free in a few years by its fading.
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For time is inches And the heart's changes, Where ghost has haunted Lost and wanted.
W. H. Auden
The trees encountered on a country stroll Reveal a lot about that country's soul ... A culture is no better than its woods.
W. H. Auden
Cathedrals, luxury liners laden with souls, Holding to the east their hulls of stone.
W. H. Auden
The commonest ivory tower is that of the average man, the state of passivity towards experience.
W. H. Auden
