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W. H. Auden Quotes
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Beloved, we are always in the wrong, Handling so clumsily our stupid lives, Suffering too little or too long, Too careful even in our selfish loves: The decorative manias we obey Die in grimaces round us every day, Yet through their tohu-bohu comes a voice Which utters an absurd command - Rejoice.
W. H. Auden
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A man is a form of life that dreams in order to act and acts in order to dream.
W. H. Auden
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So long as we think of it objectively, time is Fate or Chance, the factor in our lives for which we are not responsible, and about which we can do nothing; but when we begin to think of it subjectively, we feel responsible for our time, and the notion of punctuality arises.
W. H. Auden
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To be happy means to be free, not from pain or fear, but from care or anxiety.
W. H. Auden
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To me Art's subject is the human clay, / And landscape but a background to a torso; / All Cezanne's apples I would give away / For one small Goya or a Daumier.
W. H. Auden
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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.
W. H. Auden
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Cathedrals, luxury liners laden with souls, Holding to the east their hulls of stone.
W. H. Auden
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Encased in talent like a uniform, The rank of every poet is well known; They can amaze us like a thunderstorm, Or die so young, or live for years alone.
W. H. Auden
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Though one cannot always Remember exactly why one has been happy, There is no forgetting that one was.
W. H. Auden
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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.
W. H. Auden
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In headaches and in worry
Vaguely life leaks away,
And Time will have his fancy
To-morrow or today.
W. H. Auden
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We till shadowed days are done,
We must weep and sing
Duty's conscious wrong,
The Devil in the clock
W. H. Auden
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Blessed be all metrical rules that forbid automatic responses, force us to have second thoughts, free us from the fetters of Self.
W. H. Auden
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If it form the one landscape that we the inconstant ones
Are consistently homesick for, this is chiefly
Because it dissolves in water.
W. H. Auden
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There is no love;
There are only the various envies, all of them sad.
W. H. Auden
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In a land which is fully settled, most men must accept their local environment or try to change it by political means; only the exceptionally gifted or adventurous can leave to seek his fortune elsewhere. In America, on the other hand, to move on and make a fresh start somewhere else is still the normal reaction to dissatisfaction and failure.
W. H. Auden
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We who must die demand a miracle.
How could the Eternal do a temporal act,
The Infinite become a finite fact?
Nothing can save us that is possible:
We who must die demand a miracle.
W. H. Auden
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Behind you swiftly the figure comes softly,
The spot on your skin is a shocking disease.
W. H. Auden
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Long ago the accusations had begun,
And suddenly knew by whom it had been judged
W. H. Auden
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If the most significant characteristic of man is the complex of biological needs he shares with all members of his species, then the best lives for the writer to observe are those in which the role of natural necessity is clearest, namely, the lives of the very poor.
W. H. Auden
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My deepest feeling about politicians is that they are dangerous lunatics to be avoided when possible and carefully humored; people, above all, to whom one must never tell the truth.
W. H. Auden
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See without looking, hear without listening, breathe without asking.
W. H. Auden
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It's a pity I am so impatient and careless, as any ordinary person could learn all the techniques of photography in a week. It is the democratic art, i.e. technical skill is practically eliminated - the more foolproof cameras become with focusing and exposure gadgets the better - and artistic quality depends only on choice of subject.
W. H. Auden
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The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.
W. H. Auden
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The ideal audience the poet imagines consists of the beautiful who go to bed with him, the powerful who invite him to dinner and tell him secrets of state, and his fellow-poets. The actual audience he gets consists of myopic schoolteachers, pimply young men who eat in cafeterias, and his fellow-poets. This means, in fact, he writes for his fellow-poets.
W. H. Auden
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Quote of the day
Joy is like restless day; but peace divine Like quiet night; Lead me, O Lord, — till perfect Day shall shine Through Peace to Light.
Adelaide Anne Procter
W. H. Auden
Creative Commons
Born:
February 21, 1907
Died:
September 29, 1973
(aged 66)
Bio:
Wystan Hugh Auden was an Anglo-American poet noted for his vast poetic work in many forms on many themes.
Known for:
Funeral Blues
Poems
Musée des Beaux Arts
The Unknown Citizen
The Age of Anxiety
Most used words:
man
love
people
time
human
poetry
poet
art
life
law
day
find
heart
dead
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