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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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Wystan Hugh Auden
Wystan Auden
Wystan H Auden
W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
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The commonest ivory tower is that of the average man, the state of passivity towards experience.
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I'm always amazed at the American practice of allowing one party to a homosexual act to remain passive--it's so undemocratic. Sexmust be mutual.
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Time will say nothing but I told you so.
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The condition of mankind is, and always has been, so miserable and depraved that, if anyone were to say to the poet: For God's sake stop singing and do something useful like putting on the kettle or fetching bandages, what just reason could he give for refusing?
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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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Every poet has his dream reader: mine keeps a look out for curious prosodic fauna like bacchics and choriambs.
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A poet's hope: to be, like some valley cheese, local, but prized elsewhere.
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We are not commanded (or forbidden) to love our mates, our children, our friends, our country because such affections come naturally to us and are good in themselves, although we may corrupt them. We are commanded to love our neighbor because our natural attitude toward the other is one of either indifference or hostility.
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To ask the hard question is simple.
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Lay your sleeping head, my love, Human on my faithless arm.
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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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Lovers have lived so long with giants and elves, they won't believe again in their own size.
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For time is inches And the heart's changes, Where ghost has haunted Lost and wanted.
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In times of joy, all of us wished we possessed a tail we could wag.
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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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I see little hope for a peaceful world until men are excluded from the realm of foreign policy altogether and all decisions concerning international relations are reserved for women, preferably married ones.
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Had Greek civilization never existed ... we would never have become fully conscious.
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Few can remember clearly when innocence came to a sudden end, the moment at which we ask for the first time: Am I loved?
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Desire, even in its wildest tantrums, can neither persuade me it is love nor stop me from wishing it were.
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What we have not named as a symbol escapes our notice.
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