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The surest sign that a man has a genuine taste of his own is that he is uncertain of 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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Men
More quotes by W. H. Auden
Herds of reindeer move across Miles and miles of golden moss
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Men will pay large sums to whores for telling them they are not bores.
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We honor founders of these starving cities, Whose honor is the image of our sorrow.
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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.
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A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us.
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Encased in talent like a uniform, The rank of every poet is well known They can amaze us like a thunderstorm, Or die so young, or live for years alone.
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The parlour cars and Pullmans are packed also with scented assassins, salad-eaters who murder on milk.
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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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Clear, unscaleable ahead, Rise the mountains of instead From whose cold, cascading streams None may drink except in dreams
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It's frightening how easy it is to commit murder in America. Just a drink too much. I can see myself doing it. In England, one feels all the social restraints holding one back. But here, anything can happen.
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Every poet has his dream reader: mine keeps a look out for curious prosodic fauna like bacchics and choriambs.
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Cathedrals, luxury liners laden with souls, Holding to the east their hulls of stone.
W. H. Auden
Every man carries with him through life a mirror, as unique and impossible to get rid of as his shadow.
W. H. Auden
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.
W. H. Auden
Dance till the stars come down from the rafters Dance, Dance, Dance 'till you drop.
W. H. Auden
You will be a poet because you will always be humiliated.
W. H. Auden
Defenceless under the night Our world in stupor lies Yet, dotted everywhere, Ironic points of light Flash out wherever the Just Exchange their messages: May I, composed like them Of Eros and of dust, Beleaguered by the same Negation and despair, Show an affirming flame.
W. H. Auden
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
All works of art are commissioned in the sense that no artist can create one by a simple act of will but must wait until what he believes to be a good idea for a work comes to him.
W. H. Auden
A writer is a maker, not a man of action: his private life is of no concern to anybody but himself, his family and his friends.
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