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Most people call something profound, not because it is near some important truth but because it is distant from ordinary life. Thus, darkness is profound to the eye, silence to the ear what-is-not is the profundity of what-is.

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
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W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
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a culture is no better than its woods
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Left to itself the masculine imagination has very little appreciation for the here and now it prefers to dwell on what is absent, on what has been or may be. If men are more punctual than women, it is because they know that, without the external discipline of clock time, they would never get anything done.
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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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But once in a while the odd thing happens Once in a while the dream comes true And the whole pattern of life is altered Once in a while, the moon turns blue
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I and the public know What all schoolchildren learn, Those to whom evil is done Do evil in return.
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'Healing,' Papa would tell me, 'is not a science, but the intuitive art of wooing nature.'
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Aphorisms are essentially an aristocratic genre of writing. The aphorist does not argue or explain, he asserts and implicit in his assertion is a conviction that he is wiser and more intelligent than his readers.
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Some books are undeservedly forgotten none are undeservedly remembered.
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Almost all of our relationships begin and most of them continue as forms of mutual exploitation, a mental or physical barter, to be terminated when one or both parties run out of goods.
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In headaches and in worry Vaguely life leaks away, And Time will have his fancy To-morrow or today.
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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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A vice in common can be the ground of a friendship but not a virtue in common. X and Y may be friends because they are both drunkards or womanizers but, if they are both sober and chaste, they are friends for some other reason.
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Christmas and Easter can be subjects for poetry, but Good Friday, like Auschwitz, cannot. The reality is so horrible it is not surprising that people should have found it a stumbling block to faith.
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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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The surest sign that a man has a genuine taste of his own is that he is uncertain of it.
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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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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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An honest self-portrait is extremely rare because a man who has reached the degree of self-consciousness presupposed by the desire to paint his own portrait has almost always also developed an ego-consciousness which paints himself painting himself, and introduces artificial highlights and dramatic shadows.
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Had Greek civilization never existed ... we would never have become fully conscious.
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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?
W. H. Auden