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A poet, qua poet, has only one political duty, namely, in his own writing to set an example of the correct use of his mother tongue, which is always being corrupted. When words lose their meaning, physical force takes over.
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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To ask the hard question is simple.
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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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All sins tend to be addictive, and the terminal point of addiction is damnation.
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To be free is often to be lonely.
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One can only blaspheme if one believes.
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God is Love, we are taught as children to believe. But when we first begin to get some inkling of how He loves us, we are repelled it seems so cold, indeed, not love at all as we understand the word.
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Cathedrals, luxury liners laden with souls, Holding to the east their hulls of stone.
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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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Swans in the winter air A white perfection have
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Poetry might be defined as the clear expression of mixed feelings.
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Though one cannot always Remember exactly why one has been happy, There is no forgetting that one was.
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Marriage is rarely bliss But, surely it would be worse As particles to pelt At thousands of miles per sec About a universe In which a lover's kiss Would either not be felt Or break the loved one's neck.
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Beloved, we are always in the wrong, Handling so clumsily our stupid lives, Suffering too little or too long, Too careful even in our selfish loves: The decorative manias we obey Die in grimaces round us every day, Yet through their tohu-bohu comes a voice Which utters an absurd command - Rejoice.
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By mourning tongues The death of the poet was kept from his poems.
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History is, strictly speaking, the study of questions the study of answers belongs to anthropology and sociology.
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Health is the state about which medicine has nothing to say.
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To me Art's subject is the human clay, / And landscape but a background to a torso / All Cezanne's apples I would give away / For one small Goya or a Daumier.
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