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I don't think the mystical experience can be verbalized. When the ego disappears, so does power over language.

W. H. Auden

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W. H. Auden
Age: 66 †
Born: 1907
Born: February 21
Died: 1973
Died: September 28
Author
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Essayist
Librettist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
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Poet
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University Teacher
Writer
Jórvík
Wystan Hugh Auden
Wystan Auden
Wystan H Auden
W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
Experience
Power
Doe
Think
Disappears
Thinking
Mystical
Ego
Disappear
Language

More quotes by W. H. Auden

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We would rather be ruined than changed. We would rather die in our dread than climb the cross of the moment and let our illusions die.
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The Ogre does what ogres can, Deeds quite impossible for Man, But one prize is beyond his reach, The Ogre cannot master Speech: About a subjugated plain, Among its desperate and slain, The Ogre stalks with hands on hips, While drivel gushes from his lips.
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Few can remember clearly when innocence came to a sudden end, the moment at which we ask for the first time: Am I loved?
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You must go to bed with friends or whores, where money makes up the difference in beauty or desire.
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The words of a dead man are modified in the guts of the living.
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Now is the age of anxiety.
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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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There are three cardinal rules - don't take somebody else's boyfriend unless you've been specifically invited to do so, don't take a drink without being asked, and keep a scrupulous accounting in financial matters.
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We are all here on earth to help others.
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The sky is darkening like a stain Something is going to fall like rain And it won't be flowers
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Time and fevers burn away Individual beauty from Thoughtful children, and the grave Proves the child ephemeral
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Anyone who has a child today should train him to be either a physicist or a ballet dancer. Then he'll escape.
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Our sufferings and weaknesses, in so far as they are personal, are of no literary interest whatsoever. They are only interesting in so far as we can see them as typical of the human condition.
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Beauty, midnight, vision dies: Let the winds of dawn that blow Softly round your dreaming head Such a day of welcome show Eye and knocking heart may bless, Find our mortal world enough Noons of dryness find you fed By the involuntary powers, Nights of insult let you pass Watched by every human love.
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Rhymes, meters, stanza forms, etc., are like servants. If the master is fair enough to win their affection and firm enough to command their respect, the result is an orderly happy household. If he is too tyrannical, they give notice if he lacks authority, they become slovenly, impertinent, drunk and dishonest.
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Most people enjoy the sight of their own handwriting as they enjoy the smell of their own farts.
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Attacking bad books is not only a waste of time but also bad for the character. If I find a book really bad, the only interest I can derive from writing about it has to come from myself, from such display of intelligence, wit and malice as I can contrive. One cannot review a bad book without showing off.
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Poetry is the only art people haven't learned to consume like soup.
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Hunger allows no choice.
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To the man-in-the-street, who, I'm sorry to say, is a keen observer of life. The word Intellectual suggests straight away. A man who's untrue to his wife.
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