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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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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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All the rest is silence On the other side of the wall, And the silence ripeness, And the ripeness all.
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A poet's hope: to be, like some valley cheese, local, but prized elsewhere.
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But he would have us most of all remember to be enthusiastic over the night. Not only for the sense of wonder it alone has to offer but also because it needs our love. For with sad eyes its delectable creatures look up and beg us dumbly to ask them to follow. They are exiles who long for a future that lies in our power.
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A dead man who never caused others to die seldom rates a statue.
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A god who is both self-sufficient and content to remain so could not interest us enough to raise the question of his existence.
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Between the ages of twenty and forty we are engaged in the process of discovering who we are, which involves learning the differences between accidental limitations which it is our duty to outgrow and the necessary limitations of our nature beyond which we cannot trespass with impunity.
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Into this neutral air Where blind skyscrapers use Their full height to proclaim The strength of Collective Man, Each language pours its vain Competitive excuse.
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It is, for example, axiomatic that we should all think of ourselves as being more sensitive than other people because, when we are insensitive in our dealings with others, we cannot be aware of it at the time: conscious insensitivity is a self-contradiction.
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I don't think the mystical experience can be verbalized. When the ego disappears, so does power over language.
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The eye likes novelty, but the ear craves familiarity.
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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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Dance, dance, dance till you drop.
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Swans in the winter air A white perfection have
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We are lived by powers we pretend to understand.
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I don't get acting jobs because of my looks.
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To choose what is difficult all one's days, as if it were easy, that is faith
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Language is the mother, not the handmaiden, of thought words will tell you things you never thought or felt before.
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What we have not named as a symbol escapes our notice.
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The law cannot forgive, for the law has not been wronged, only broken only persons can be wronged. The law can pardon, but it can only pardon what it has the power to punish.
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Sob, heavy world Sob as you spin, Mantled in mist Remote from the happy.
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