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Encased in talent like a uniform, The rank of every poet is well known They can amaze us like a thunderstorm, Or die so young, or live for years alone.
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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Poet
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University Teacher
Writer
Jórvík
Wystan Hugh Auden
Wystan Auden
Wystan H Auden
W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
Known
Thunderstorm
Young
Rank
Live
Uniform
Wells
Uniforms
Well
Poet
Every
Talent
Years
Alone
Encased
Like
Dies
Amaze
More quotes by W. H. Auden
A man has his distinctive personal scent which his wife, his children and his dog can recognize. A crowd has a generalized stink. The public is odorless.
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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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All pity is self-pity.
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In addition to English, at least one ancient language, probably Greek or Hebrew, and two modern languages would be required.
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A poet can write about a man slaying a dragon, but not about a man pushing a button that releases a bomb.
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If equal affection cannot be, let the more loving be me.
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The ear tends to be lazy, craves the familiar and is shocked by the unexpected the eye, on the other hand, tends to be impatient, craves the novel and is bored by repetition.
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One rational voice is dumb: over a grave The household of Impulse mourns one dearly loved. Sad is Eros, builder of cities, And weeping anarchic Aphrodite.
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Poetry might be defined as the clear expression of mixed feelings.
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Few people take an interest in Iceland, but in those few the interest is passionate.
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Perhaps there is only one cardinal sin: impatience. Because of impatience we were driven out of Paradise, because of impatience we cannot return.
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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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The true men of action in our time, those who transform the world, are not the politicians and statesmen, but the scientists
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It is already possible to imagine a society in which the majority of the population, that is to say, its laborers, will have almost as much leisure as in earlier times was enjoyed by the aristocracy. When one recalls how aristocracies in the past actually behaved, the prospect is not cheerful.
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A poet feels the impulse to create a work of art when the passive awe provoked by an event is transformed into a desire to express that awe in a rite of worship.
W. H. Auden
We are lived by powers we pretend to understand.
W. H. Auden
Cathedrals, luxury liners laden with souls, Holding to the east their hulls of stone.
W. H. Auden
the child unlucky in his little State, Some hearth where freedom is excluded, A hive whose honey is fear and worry, Feels calmer now and somehow assured of escape
W. H. Auden
A verbal art like poetry is reflective it stops to think. Music is immediate, it goes on to become.
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Look if you like, but you will have to leap.
W. H. Auden