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Our claim to our own bodies and our world is our catastrophe.

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
Catastrophe
Claim
Bodies
Claims
Body
World

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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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Those who hate to go to bed fear death those who hate to get up fear life.
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Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.
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What is a Professor of Poetry? How can poetry be professed?
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Political history is far too criminal to be a fit subject of study for the young. Children should acquire their heroes and villians from fiction.
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But once in a while the odd thing happens Once in a while the dream comes true And the whole pattern of life is altered Once in a while, the moon turns blue
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You need not see what someone is doing to know if it is his vocation, you have only to watch his eyes: a cook mixing a sauce, a surgeon making a primary incision, a clerk completing a bill of lading wear the same rapt expression, forgetting themselves in a function. How beautiful it is, that eye-on-the-obje ct look.
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It is nonsense to speak of 'higher' and 'lower' pleasures. To a hungry man it is, rightly, more important that he eat than that he philosophize.
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If age, which is certainly Just as wicked as youth, look any wiser, It is only that youth is still able to believe It will get away with anything, while age Knows only too well that it has got away with nothing.
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What the poet says has never been said before, but, once he has said it, his readers recognize its validity for themselves.
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The trees encountered on a country stroll Reveal a lot about that country's soul ... A culture is no better than its woods.
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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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I sit in one of the dives On Fifty-second Street Uncertain and afraid As the clever hopes expire Of a low dishonest decade
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A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us.
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All the literati keep An imaginary friend.
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Thou shalt not answer questionnaires Or quizzes upon world affairs, Nor with compliance Take any test. Thou shalt not sit with statisticians nor commit A social science.
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There is no such thing as the State And no one exists alone Hunger allows no choice To the citizen or the police We must love one another or die.
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Words have no word for words that are not true.
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Love each other or perish.
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