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All wishes, whatever their apparent content, have the same and unvarying meaning: I refuse to be what I am.

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
Meaning
Whatever
Wish
Unvarying
Apparent
Wishes
Content
Refuse

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Accurate scholarship can unearth the whole offence from luther untill noe that has driven a culture mad. From what occured at linz what huge imago made a psychopathic god. i and the public know what all schoolchildren learn those to whom evil is done do evil in return.
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Behind you swiftly the figure comes softly, The spot on your skin is a shocking disease.
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Composing mortals with immortal fire.
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'Healing,' Papa would tell me, 'is not a science, but the intuitive art of wooing nature.'
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In a world of prayer, we are all equal in the sense that each of us is a unique person, with a unique perspective on the world, a member of a class of one.
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Nobody knows what the cause is, though some pretend they do it like some hidden assassin waiting to strike at you. Childless women get it, and men when they retire it as if there had to be some outlet for their foiled creative fire.
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It is nonsense to speak of 'higher' and 'lower' pleasures. To a hungry man it is, rightly, more important that he eat than that he philosophize.
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Machines are beneficial to the degree that they eliminate the need for labor, harmful to the degree that they eliminate the need for skill.
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To discover how to be human now is the reason we follow this star.
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Every high C accurately struck demolishes the theory that we are the irresponsible puppets of fate or chance.
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No human being is innocent, but there is a class of innocent human actions called Games.
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To pray is to pay attention to something or someone other than oneself.
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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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Human beings are, necessarily, actors who...can be divided...into the sane who know they are acting and the mad who do not.
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In the deserts of the heart Let the healing fountain start.
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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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Without communication with the dead, a fully human life is not possible.
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What we have not named as a symbol escapes our notice.
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What living occasion can, Be just to the absent?
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