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What we have not named as a symbol escapes our notice.

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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Literary Critic
Literary Historian
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Jórvík
Wystan Hugh Auden
Wystan Auden
Wystan H Auden
W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
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More quotes by W. H. Auden

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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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Clear, unscaleable ahead, Rise the mountains of instead From whose cold, cascading streams None may drink except in dreams
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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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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.
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Before people complain of the obscurity of modern poetry, they should first examine their consciences and ask themselves with how many people and on how many occasions they have genuinely and profoundly shared some experience with another...
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All sins tend to be addictive, and the terminal point of addiction is damnation.
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Without Art, we should have no notion of the sacred without Science, we should always worship false gods.
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There are three cardinal rules - don't take somebody else's boyfriend unless you've been specifically invited to do so, don't take a drink without being asked, and keep a scrupulous accounting in financial matters.
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Every high C accurately struck demolishes the theory that we are the irresponsible puppets of fate or chance.
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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.
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Dance, dance, dance till you drop.
W. H. Auden
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A poem is a verbal artifact which must be as skillfully and solidly constructed as a table or a motorcycle.
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Time and fevers burn away Individual beauty from Thoughtful children, and the grave Proves the child ephemeral
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A writer is a maker, not a man of action: his private life is of no concern to anybody but himself, his family and his friends.
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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.
W. H. Auden
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'Healing,' Papa would tell me, 'is not a science, but the intuitive art of wooing nature.'
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Acts of injustice done Between the setting and the rising sun In history lie like bones, each one.
W. H. Auden
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How should we like it were stars to burn With a passion for us we could not return? If equal affection cannot be, Let the more loving one be me.
W. H. Auden
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The true men of action in our time, those who transform the world, are not the politicians and statesmen, but the scientists
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Civilizations should be measured by the degree of diversity attained and the degree of unity retained.
W. H. Auden