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Human language is mythological and metaphorical by nature.

W. H. Auden

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W. H. Auden
Age: 66 †
Born: 1907
Born: February 21
Died: 1973
Died: September 28
Author
Composer
Essayist
Librettist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Playwright
Poet
Screenwriter
University Teacher
Writer
Jórvík
Wystan Hugh Auden
Wystan Auden
Wystan H Auden
W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
Mythological
Metaphorical
Language
Nature
Human
Humans

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The slogan of Hell: Eat or be eaten. The slogan of Heaven: Eat and be eaten.
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Fate succumbs many a species: one alone jeopardises itself.
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the child unlucky in his little State, Some hearth where freedom is excluded, A hive whose honey is fear and worry, Feels calmer now and somehow assured of escape
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We till shadowed days are done, We must weep and sing Duty's conscious wrong, The Devil in the clock
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Most people enjoy the sight of their own handwriting as they enjoy the smell of their own farts.
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One of the troubles of our times is that we are all, I think, precocious as personalities and backward as characters.
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The windiest militant trash Important Persons shout Is not so crude as our wish: What mad Nijinsky wrote About Diaghilev Is true of the normal heart For the error bred in the bone Of each woman and each man Craves what it cannot have Not universal love But to be loved alone.
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Criticism should be a casual conversation.
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Intellectual disgrace Stares from every human face, And the seas of pity lie Locked and frozen in each eye.
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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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The primary function of poetry, as of all the arts, is to make us more aware of ourselves and the world around us. I do not know if such increased awareness makes us more moral or more efficient. I hope not. I think it makes us more human, and I am quite certain it makes us more difficult to deceive.
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The eye likes novelty, but the ear craves familiarity.
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Murder is commoner among cooks than among members of any other profession.
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Let us honor if we can the vertical man, though we value none but the horizontal one
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Death is the sound of distant thunder at a picnic.
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Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.
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Language is the mother, not the handmaiden, of thought words will tell you things you never thought or felt before.
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The surest sign that a man has a genuine taste of his own is that he is uncertain of it.
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Without communication with the dead, a fully human life is not possible.
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In the end, art is small beer. The really serious things are earning one's living so as not to be a parasite and loving one's neighbor.
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