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When one looks into the window of a store which sells devotional art objects, one can't help wishing the iconoclasts had won.

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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The camera may do justice to laughter, but must degrade sorrow.
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Now the leaves are falling fast, Nurse's flowers will not last Nurses to their graves are gone, And the prams go rolling on.
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O let not Time deceive you, You cannot conquer Time.
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A shilling life will give you all the facts.
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The theater has never been any good since the actors became gentlemen.
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Most people call something profound, not because it is near some important truth but because it is distant from ordinary life. Thus, darkness is profound to the eye, silence to the ear what-is-not is the profundity of what-is.
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In times of joy, all of us wished we possessed a tail we could wag.
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When someone between twenty and forty says, apropos of a work of art, 'I know what I like,' he is really saying 'I have no taste of my own but accept the taste of my cultural milieu.
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Man desires to be free and he desires to feel important. This places him in a dilemma, for the more he emancipates himself from necessity the less important he feels.
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We must love one another or die
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The lights must never go out, The music must always play
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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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The chances are that, in the course of his lifetime, the major poet will write more bad poems than the minor, simply because major poets write a lot.
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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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Politics cannot be a science, because in politics theory and practice cannot be separated, and the sciences depend upon their separation.
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What is a Professor of Poetry? How can poetry be professed?
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Time will say nothing but I told you so, Time only knows the price we have to pay If I could tell you I would let you know.
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Follow, poet, follow right To the bottom of the night, With your unconstraining voice Still persuade us to rejoice With the farming of a verse Make a vineyard of the curse, Sing of human unsuccess In a rapture of distress In the deserts of the heart Let the healing fountain start, In the prison of his days Teach the free man how to praise.
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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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