Quote

In a land which is fully settled, most men must accept their local environment or try to change it by political means only the exceptionally gifted or adventurous can leave to seek his fortune elsewhere. In America, on the other hand, to move on and make a fresh start somewhere else is still the normal reaction to dissatisfaction and failure.

W. H. Auden

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W. H. Auden
Age: 66 †
Born: 1907
Born: February 21
Died: 1973
Died: September 28
Author
Composer
Essayist
Librettist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Playwright
Poet
Screenwriter
University Teacher
Writer
Jórvík
Wystan Hugh Auden
Wystan Auden
Wystan H Auden
W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
Still
Moving
Normal
Fresh
Adventurous
Must
Means
Accepting
Satisfaction
Settled
Mean
Else
Move
Fully
Gifted
Trying
Political
Leave
Somewhere
Reaction
Make
Hands
Environment
Fortune
Elsewhere
Men
Stills
Land
Seek
Locals
Change
Hand
Accept
Local
Exceptionally
America
Start
Failure
Reactions
Dissatisfaction

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The words of a dead man are modified in the guts of the living.
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To hunt for symbols in a fairy tale is absolutely fatal.
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The way to read a fairy tale is to throw yourself in.
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Genealogies are admirable things, provided they do not encourage the curious delusion that some families are older than others.
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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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Young people, who are still uncertain of their identity, often try on a succession of masks in the hope of finding the one which suits them - the one, in fact, which is not a mask.
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I sit in one of the dives On Fifty-second Street Uncertain and afraid As the clever hopes expire Of a low dishonest decade
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There's only one good test of pornography. Get twelve normal men to read the book, and then ask them, ''Did you get an erection?'' If the answer is ''Yes'' from a majority of the twelve, then the book is pornographic.
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The friends who met here and embraced are gone, Each to his own mistake.
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As biological organisms made of matter, we are subject to the laws of physics and biology: as conscious persons who create our own history we are free to decide what that history shall be. Without science, we should have no notion of equality without art, no notion of liberty.
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In headaches and in worry Vaguely life leaks away, And Time will have his fancy To-morrow or today.
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Each in the cell of himself is almost convinced of his freedom.
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Every man carries with him through life a mirror, as unique and impossible to get rid of as his shadow.
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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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All the rest is silence On the other side of the wall, And the silence ripeness, And the ripeness all.
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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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Earth, receive an honored guest William Yeats is laid to rest. Let the Irish vessel lie Emptied of its poetry.
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Whatever you do, good or bad, people will always have something negative to say
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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.
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