Quote

Into this neutral air Where blind skyscrapers use Their full height to proclaim The strength of Collective Man, Each language pours its vain Competitive excuse.

W. H. Auden

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W. H. Auden
Age: 66 †
Born: 1907
Born: February 21
Died: 1973
Died: September 28
Author
Composer
Essayist
Librettist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Playwright
Poet
Screenwriter
University Teacher
Writer
Jórvík
Wystan Hugh Auden
Wystan Auden
Wystan H Auden
W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
Blind
Proclaim
Air
Neutral
Strength
Collectives
Full
Collective
Language
Competitive
Use
Height
Skyscrapers
Men
Vain
Pours
Excuse
Skyscraper

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When I am in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a drawing room full of dukes.
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You need not see what someone is doing to know if it is his vocation, you have only to watch his eyes: a cook mixing a sauce, a surgeon making a primary incision, a clerk completing a bill of lading wear the same rapt expression, forgetting themselves in a function. How beautiful it is, that eye-on-the-obje ct look.
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But if a stranger in the train asks me my occupation, I never answer writer for fear that he may go on to ask me what I write, and to answer poetry would embarrass us both, for we both know that nobody can earn a living simply by writing poetry.
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Let us honor if we can the vertical man, though we value none but the horizontal one
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What the mass media offers is not popular art, but entertainment which is intended to be consumed like food, forgotten, and replaced by a new dish.
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The older lives like not to be stood in rows or at right angles.
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Dance till the stars come down from the rafters Dance, Dance, Dance 'till you drop.
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I will love you forever swears the poet. I find this easy to swear too. I will love you at 4:15 pm next Tuesday - Is that still as easy?
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History marched to the drums of a clear idea...
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A craftsman knows in advance what the finished result will be, while the artist knows only what it will be when he has finished it.
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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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Those who hate to go to bed fear death those who hate to get up fear life.
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Few people take an interest in Iceland, but in those few the interest is passionate.
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There is a certain kind of person who is so dominated by the desire to be loved for himself alone that he has constantly to test those around him by tiresome behavior what he says and does must be admired, not because it is intrinsically admirable, but because it is his remark, his act. Does not this explain a good deal of avant-garde art?
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All that we are not stares back at what we are.
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Words have no word for words that are not true.
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What we have not named as a symbol escapes our notice.
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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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As a rule, it was the pleasure-haters who became unjust.
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