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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.

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
Literary Historian
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Poet
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University Teacher
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Jórvík
Wystan Hugh Auden
Wystan Auden
Wystan H Auden
W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
Second
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Forbid
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Automatic
Self
Responses
Response
Rules
Blessed
Thoughts
Metrical

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Ideally, government is the means by which all the individual wills are assured complete freedom of moral choice and at the same time prevented from ever clashing.
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Acts of injustice done Between the setting and the rising sun In history lie like bones, each one.
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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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All I have is a voice.
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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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The desires of the heart are as crooked as corkscrews Not to be born is the best for man The second best is a formal order The dance's pattern, dance while you can. Dance, dance, for the figure is easy The tune is catching and will not stop Dance till the stars come down from the rafters Dance, dance, dance till you drop.
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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.
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Caesar's double-bed is warm As an unimportant clerk Writes i do not like my work On a pink official form.
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An unmanly sort of man whose love life seems to have been largely confined to crying in laps and playing mouse.
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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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By mourning tongues The death of the poet was kept from his poems.
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In a game, just losing is almost as satisfying as just winning... In life the loser's score is always zero.
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I think the first prerequisite to civilization is an ability to make polite conversation.
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Good can imagine Evil but Evil cannot imagine Good.
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We were put on this Earth to help others. Why others were put here is beyond me.
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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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In life the loser's score is always zero.
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Perhaps there is only one cardinal sin: impatience. Because of impatience we were driven out of Paradise, because of impatience we cannot return.
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You shall love your crooked neighbour, with your crooked heart.
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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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