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I sit in one of the dives On Fifty-second Street Uncertain and afraid As the clever hopes expire Of a low dishonest decade
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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University Teacher
Writer
Jórvík
Wystan Hugh Auden
Wystan Auden
Wystan H Auden
W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
Fear
Clever
Decades
Dives
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Expire
Street
Dishonest
Streets
Decade
Afraid
Uncertain
Second
Hopes
Hope
Fifty
More quotes by W. H. Auden
Poetry is the only art people haven't learned to consume like soup.
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It's frightfully important for a writer to be his age, not to be younger or older than he is. One might ask, What should I write at the age of sixty-four, but never, What should I write in 1940.
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Lovers have lived so long with giants and elves, they won't believe again in their own size.
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We all have these places where shy humiliations gambol on sunny afternoons.
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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.
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Ideally, government is the means by which all the individual wills are assured complete freedom of moral choice and at the same time prevented from ever clashing.
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The class distinctions proper to a democratic society are not those of rank or money, still less, as is apt to happen when these are abandoned, of race, but of age.
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Sincerity is technique.
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Private faces in public places Are wiser and nicer Than public faces in private places.
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Each in the cell of himself is almost convinced of his freedom.
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Though one cannot always Remember exactly why one has been happy, There is no forgetting that one was.
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Doom is dark and deeper than any sea-dingle.
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Every autobiography is concerned with two characters, a Don Quixote, the Ego, and a Sancho Panza, the Self.
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Clear, unscaleable ahead, Rise the mountains of instead From whose cold, cascading streams None may drink except in dreams
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Whatever the field under discussion, those who engage in debate must not only believe in each other's good faith, but also in their capacity to arrive at the truth.
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There is a great deal of difference in believing something still, and believing it again.
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Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone. Silence the pianos and with muffled drum Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
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We were put on this Earth to help others. Why others were put here is beyond me.
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The most important truths are likely to be those which society at that time least wants to hear.
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Human language is mythological and metaphorical by nature.
W. H. Auden
