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If it form the one landscape that we the inconstant ones Are consistently homesick for, this is chiefly Because it dissolves in water.

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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Literary Critic
Literary Historian
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Jórvík
Wystan Hugh Auden
Wystan Auden
Wystan H Auden
W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
Chiefly
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Consistently
Landscape
Ones
Water
Inconstant
Form
Dissolves
Homesick

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To my generation no other English poet seemed so perfectly to express the sensibility of a male adolescent. If I do not now turn to him very often, I am eternally grateful to him for the joy he gave me in my youth.
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Say this city has ten million souls, Some are living in mansions, some are living in holes: Yet there’s no place for us, my dear, yet there’s no place for us.
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Civilizations should be measured by the degree of diversity attained and the degree of unity retained.
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For time is inches And the heart's changes, Where ghost has haunted Lost and wanted.
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There are bills to be paid, machines to keep in repair, Irregular verbs to learn, the Time Being to redeem From insignificance.
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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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A poet must never make a statement simply because it is sounds poetically exciting he must also believe it to be true.
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By mourning tongues The death of the poet was kept from his poems.
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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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Cathedrals, luxury liners laden with souls, Holding to the east their hulls of stone.
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A god who is both self-sufficient and content to remain so could not interest us enough to raise the question of his existence.
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To choose what is difficult all one's days, as if it were easy, that is faith
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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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The older lives like not to be stood in rows or at right angles.
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Now is the age of anxiety.
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All poets adore explosions, thunderstorms, tornadoes, conflagrations, ruins, scenes of spectacular carnage. The poetic imagination is not at all a desirable quality in a statesman.
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Evil is unspectacular and always human, and shares our bed and eats at our own table.
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You shall love your crooked neighbour, with your crooked heart.
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Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can: all of them make me laugh.
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