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What living occasion can, Be just to the absent?
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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Jórvík
Wystan Hugh Auden
Wystan Auden
Wystan H Auden
W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
Absent
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More quotes by W. H. Auden
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.
W. H. Auden
No good opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible.
W. H. Auden
Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.
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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.
W. H. Auden
Detective stories have nothing to do with works of art.
W. H. Auden
Words have no word for words that are not true.
W. H. Auden
What the poet says has never been said before, but, once he has said it, his readers recognize its validity for themselves.
W. H. Auden
Human beings are, necessarily, actors who...can be divided...into the sane who know they are acting and the mad who do not.
W. H. Auden
We are all here on earth to help others.
W. H. Auden
No hero is mortal till he dies.
W. H. Auden
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.
W. H. Auden
Some books are undeservedly forgotten none are undeservedly remembered.
W. H. Auden
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.
W. H. Auden
Good can imagine Evil but Evil cannot imagine Good.
W. H. Auden
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.
W. H. Auden
I think the first prerequisite to civilization is an ability to make polite conversation.
W. H. Auden
All that we are not stares back at what we are.
W. H. Auden
Poetry makes nothing happen.
W. H. Auden
Man is a history-making creature, who can neither repeat his past, nor leave it behind.
W. H. Auden
About suffering they were never wrong, The Old Masters How well they understood Its human position how it takes place While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along.
W. H. Auden
