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Aphorisms are essentially an aristocratic genre of writing. The aphorist does not argue or explain, he asserts and implicit in his assertion is a conviction that he is wiser and more intelligent than his readers.

W. H. Auden

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W. H. Auden
Age: 66 †
Born: 1907
Born: February 21
Died: 1973
Died: September 28
Author
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Literary Critic
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Jórvík
Wystan Hugh Auden
Wystan Auden
Wystan H Auden
W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
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Aphorism
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Aphorisms
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Aristocratic

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A vice in common can be the ground of a friendship but not a virtue in common. X and Y may be friends because they are both drunkards or womanizers but, if they are both sober and chaste, they are friends for some other reason.
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To pray is to pay attention to something or someone other than oneself.
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You will be a poet because you will always be humiliated.
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Beauty, midnight, vision dies: Let the winds of dawn that blow Softly round your dreaming head Such a day of welcome show Eye and knocking heart may bless, Find our mortal world enough Noons of dryness find you fed By the involuntary powers, Nights of insult let you pass Watched by every human love.
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The closest modern equivalent to the Homeric hero is the ace fighter pilot.
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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I smell blood and an era of prominent madmen.
W. H. Auden
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No hero is mortal till he dies.
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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About suffering they were never wrong, The Old Masters.
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The Ogre does what ogres can, Deeds quite impossible for Man, But one prize is beyond his reach, The Ogre cannot master Speech: About a subjugated plain, Among its desperate and slain, The Ogre stalks with hands on hips, While drivel gushes from his lips.
W. H. Auden
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Aside from purely technical analysis, nothing can be said about music, except when it is bad when it is good, one can only listen and be grateful.
W. H. Auden
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A dead man who never caused others to die seldom rates a statue.
W. H. Auden
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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.
W. H. Auden
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We do not change as we grow up. The difference between the child and the adult is that the former doesn't know who he is and the latter does.
W. H. Auden
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Attacking bad books is not only a waste of time but also bad for the character. If I find a book really bad, the only interest I can derive from writing about it has to come from myself, from such display of intelligence, wit and malice as I can contrive. One cannot review a bad book without showing off.
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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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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I said earlier that I do not believe an artist's life throws much light upon his works. I do believe, however, that, more often than most people realize, his works may throw light upon his life. An artist with certain imaginative ideas in his head may then involve himself in relationships which are congenial to them.
W. H. Auden
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Language is the mother, not the handmaiden, of thought words will tell you things you never thought or felt before.
W. H. Auden