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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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More quotes by W. H. Auden
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.
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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.
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Art is our chief means of breaking bread with the dead.
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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 poet must never make a statement simply because it is sounds poetically exciting he must also believe it to be true.
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Civilizations should be measured by the degree of diversity attained and the degree of unity retained.
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We honor founders of these starving cities, Whose honor is the image of our sorrow.
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The image of myself which I try to create in my own mind in order that I may love myself is very different from the image which I try to create in the minds of others in order that they may love me.
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A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us.
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August for the people and their favourite islands. Daily the steamers sidle up to meet The effusive welcome of the pier.
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Proper names are poetry in the raw. Like all poetry they are untranslatable.
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The way to read a fairy tale is to throw yourself in.
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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.
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Nobody is ever sent to Hell: he or she insists on going there.
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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?
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Blessed be all metrical rules that forbid automatic responses, force us to have second thoughts, free us from the fetters of Self.
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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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Clear, unscaleable ahead, Rise the mountains of instead From whose cold, cascading streams None may drink except in dreams
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I and the public know What all schoolchildren learn, Those to whom evil is done Do evil in return.
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I'm always amazed at the American practice of allowing one party to a homosexual act to remain passive--it's so undemocratic. Sexmust be mutual.
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