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Genealogies are admirable things, provided they do not encourage the curious delusion that some families are older than others.

W. H. Auden

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W. H. Auden
Age: 66 †
Born: 1907
Born: February 21
Died: 1973
Died: September 28
Author
Composer
Essayist
Librettist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Playwright
Poet
Screenwriter
University Teacher
Writer
Jórvík
Wystan Hugh Auden
Wystan Auden
Wystan H Auden
W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
Families
Curious
Older
Others
Genealogy
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Admirable
Provided
Delusion
Encourage

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An unmanly sort of man whose love life seems to have been largely confined to crying in laps and playing mouse.
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A verbal art like poetry is reflective it stops to think. Music is immediate, it goes on to become.
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The older lives like not to be stood in rows or at right angles.
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Cathedrals, luxury liners laden with souls, Holding to the east their hulls of stone.
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As a rule, it was the pleasure-haters who became unjust.
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Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.
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The stars are dead. The animals will not look: We are left alone with our day, and the time is short, and History to the defeated May say Alas but cannot help nor pardon.
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Human language is mythological and metaphorical by nature.
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Harrow the house of the dead look shining at New styles of architecture, a change of heart.
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The only way to spend New Year's Eve is either quietly with friends or in a brothel. Otherwise when the evening ends and people pair off, someone is bound to be left in tears.
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The poet marries the language, and out of this marriage the poem is born.
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Alone, alone, about the dreadful wood / Of conscious evil runs a lost mankind, / Dreading to find its Father.
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No person can be a great leader unless he takes genuine joy in the successes of those under him.
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To ask the hard question is simple.
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Without communication with the dead, a fully human life is not possible.
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Literary confessors are contemptible, like beggars who exhibit their sores for money, but not so contemptible as the public that buys their books.
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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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Political history is far too criminal to be a fit subject of study for the young. Children should acquire their heroes and villians from fiction.
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Now is the age of anxiety.
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