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A poet feels the impulse to create a work of art when the passive awe provoked by an event is transformed into a desire to express that awe in a rite of worship.

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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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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The critical opinions of a writer should always be taken with a large grain of salt. For the most part, they are manifestations of his debate with himself as to what he should do next and what he should avoid.
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To have a sense of sin means to feel guilty at there being an ethical choice to make, a guilt which, however good I may become, remains unchanged.
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Beloved, we are always in the wrong, Handling so clumsily our stupid lives, Suffering too little or too long, Too careful even in our selfish loves: The decorative manias we obey Die in grimaces round us every day, Yet through their tohu-bohu comes a voice Which utters an absurd command - Rejoice.
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There is no love There are only the various envies, all of them sad.
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The primary function of poetry, as of all the arts, is to make us more aware of ourselves and the world around us. I do not know if such increased awareness makes us more moral or more efficient. I hope not. I think it makes us more human, and I am quite certain it makes us more difficult to deceive.
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We must love one another or die
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It's frightfully important for a writer to be his age, not to be younger or older than he is. One might ask, What should I write at the age of sixty-four, but never, What should I write in 1940.
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The ear tends to be lazy, craves the familiar and is shocked by the unexpected the eye, on the other hand, tends to be impatient, craves the novel and is bored by repetition.
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Over the tea-cups and in the square the tongue has its desire Still waters run deep, my dear, there's never smoke without fire.
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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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Drama began as the act of a whole community. Ideally, there would be no speculators. In practice, every member of the audience should feel like an understudy.
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Now the leaves are falling fast, Nurse's flowers will not last Nurses to their graves are gone, And the prams go rolling on.
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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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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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Accurate scholarship can unearth the whole offence from luther untill noe that has driven a culture mad. From what occured at linz what huge imago made a psychopathic god. i and the public know what all schoolchildren learn those to whom evil is done do evil in return.
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Detective stories have nothing to do with works of art.
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The sky is darkening like a stain Something is going to fall like rain And it won't be flowers
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Our claim to our own bodies and our world is our catastrophe.
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In life the loser's score is always zero.
W. H. Auden