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In addition to English, at least one ancient language, probably Greek or Hebrew, and two modern languages would be required.
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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Jórvík
Wystan Hugh Auden
Wystan Auden
Wystan H Auden
W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
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Greek
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Hebrew
More quotes by W. H. Auden
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.
W. H. Auden
Left to itself the masculine imagination has very little appreciation for the here and now it prefers to dwell on what is absent, on what has been or may be. If men are more punctual than women, it is because they know that, without the external discipline of clock time, they would never get anything done.
W. H. Auden
I used to try and concentrate the poem so much that there wasn't a word that wasn't essential. This leads to becoming boring and constipated.
W. H. Auden
About suffering they were never wrong, The Old Masters How well they understood Its human position how it takes place While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along.
W. H. Auden
Man is a history-making creature, who can neither repeat his past, nor leave it behind.
W. H. Auden
The way to read a fairy tale is to throw yourself in.
W. H. Auden
Over the tea-cups and in the square the tongue has its desire Still waters run deep, my dear, there's never smoke without fire.
W. H. Auden
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.
W. H. Auden
In the eyes of others a man is a poet if he has written one good poem. In his own he is only a poet at the moment when he is making his last revision to a new poem. The moment before, he was still only a potential poet the moment after, he is a man who has ceased to write poetry, perhaps forever.
W. H. Auden
Time and fevers burn away Individual beauty from Thoughtful children, and the grave Proves the child ephemeral
W. H. Auden
Of course, Behaviourism 'works'. So does torture. Give me a no-nonsense, down-to-earth behaviourist, a few drugs, and simple electrical appliances, and in six months I will have him reciting the Athanasian Creed in public.
W. H. Auden
Anyone who has a child today should train him to be either a physicist or a ballet dancer. Then he'll escape.
W. H. Auden
Those who hate to go to bed fear death those who hate to get up fear life.
W. H. Auden
To have a sense of sin means to feel guilty at there being an ethical choice to make, a guilt which, however good I may become, remains unchanged.
W. H. Auden
Politics cannot be a science, because in politics theory and practice cannot be separated, and the sciences depend upon their separation.
W. H. Auden
Aphorisms are essentially an aristocratic genre of writing. The aphorist does not argue or explain, he asserts and implicit in his assertion is a conviction that he is wiser and more intelligent than his readers.
W. H. Auden
A craftsman knows in advance what the finished result will be, while the artist knows only what it will be when he has finished it.
W. H. Auden
Had Greek civilization never existed ... we would never have become fully conscious.
W. H. Auden
By mourning tongues The death of the poet was kept from his poems.
W. H. Auden
No hero is mortal till he dies.
W. H. Auden
