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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
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Wystan Hugh Auden
Wystan Auden
Wystan H Auden
W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
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Forbid
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I'll love you till the ocean Is folded and hung up to dry And the seven stars go squawking Like geese about the sky.
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Some books are undeservedly forgotten none are undeservedly remembered.
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The class distinctions proper to a democratic society are not those of rank or money, still less, as is apt to happen when these are abandoned, of race, but of age.
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As a rule, it was the pleasure-haters who became unjust.
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Nobody is ever sent to Hell: he or she insists on going there.
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Of course, Behaviourism 'works'. So does torture. Give me a no-nonsense, down-to-earth behaviourist, a few drugs, and simple electrical appliances, and in six months I will have him reciting the Athanasian Creed in public.
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Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone. Silence the pianos and with muffled drum Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
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A small grove massacred to the last ash, An oak with heart-rot, give away the show: This great society is going to smash They cannot fool us with how fast they go, How much they cost each other and the gods. A culture is no better than its woods.
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It is a sad fact about our culture that a poet can earn much more money writing or talking about his art than he can by practicing it.
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Choice of attention - to pay attention to this and ignore that - is to the inner life what choice of action is to the outer. In both cases, a man is responsible for his choice and must accept the consequences, whatever they may be.
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What answer to the meaning of existence should one require beyond the right to exercise one's gifts?
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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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The only reason the Protestants and Catholics have given up the idea of universal domination is because they've realised they can't get away with it.
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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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A shilling life will give you all the facts.
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Between friends differences in taste or opinion are irritating in direct proportion to their triviality.
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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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Intellectual disgrace Stares from every human face, And the seas of pity lie Locked and frozen in each eye.
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