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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
Wystan H Auden
W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
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More quotes by W. H. Auden
I just try to put the thing out and hope somebody will read it. Someone says: 'Whom do you write for?' I reply: 'Do you read me?' If they say 'Yes,' I say, 'Do you like it?' If they say 'No,' then I say, 'I don't write for you.'
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Poetry is the only art people haven't learned to consume like soup.
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To pray is to pay attention to something or someone other than oneself.
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Say this city has ten million souls, Some are living in mansions, some are living in holes: Yet there’s no place for us, my dear, yet there’s no place for us.
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From beginning to end Wilde performed his life and continued to do so even after fame had taken the plot out of his own hands.
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Between friends differences in taste or opinion are irritating in direct proportion to their triviality.
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O plunge your hands in water, Plunge them in up to the wrist Stare, stare in the basin And wonder what you've missed.
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The basic stimulus to the intelligence is doubt, a feeling that the meaning of an experience is not self-evident.
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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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Earth, receive an honored guest William Yeats is laid to rest. Let the Irish vessel lie Emptied of its poetry.
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The eye likes novelty, but the ear craves familiarity.
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Hunger allows no choice.
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To ask the hard question is simple.
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As biological organisms made of matter, we are subject to the laws of physics and biology: as conscious persons who create our own history we are free to decide what that history shall be. Without science, we should have no notion of equality without art, no notion of liberty.
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The way to read a fairy tale is to throw yourself in.
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The trees encountered on a country stroll Reveal a lot about that country's soul ... A culture is no better than its woods.
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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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I used to try and concentrate the poem so much that there wasn't a word that wasn't essential. This leads to becoming boring and constipated.
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Fate succumbs many a species: one alone jeopardises itself.
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Time will say nothing but I told you so.
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