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W. H. Auden Quotes
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Beauty, midnight, vision dies: Let the winds of dawn that blow Softly round your dreaming head Such a day of welcome show Eye and knocking heart may bless, Find our mortal world enough; Noons of dryness find you fed By the involuntary powers, Nights of insult let you pass Watched by every human love.
W. H. Auden
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This is the Night Mail crossing the Border,
Bringing the cheque and the postal order,
Letters for the rich, letters for the poor,
The shop at the corner, the girl next door.
Pulling up Beattock, a steady climb:
The gradient's against her, but she's on time.
Past cotton-grass and moorland boulder,
Shovelling white steam over her shoulder.
W. H. Auden
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Most people are even less original in their dreaming than in their waking life; their dreams are more monotonous than their thoughts and oddly enough, more literary.
W. H. Auden
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Tomorrow for the young the poets exploding like bombs, The walks by the lake, the weeks of perfect communion; Tomorrow the bicycle races Through the suburbs on summer evenings. But today the struggle.
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.
W. H. Auden
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Young people, who are still uncertain of their identity, often try on a succession of masks in the hope of finding the one which suits them — the one, in fact, which is not a mask.
W. H. Auden
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Moreover, if great men are the only hope of the Evolutionary Process, they are morally bound to rule over the masses for their own good — we are all here on earth to help others: what on earth the others are here for, I don't know — and the masses have no right whatsoever to resist them.
W. H. Auden
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About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along.
W. H. Auden
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In a brothel, both
The ladies and gentlemen
Have nicknames only.
W. H. Auden
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Without Art, we should have no notion of the sacred; without Science, we should always worship false gods.
W. H. Auden
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The stars are dead. The animals will not look.
We are left alone with our day, and the time is short, and
History to the defeated
May say Alas but cannot help nor pardon.
W. H. Auden
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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.
W. H. Auden
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The most exciting rhythms seem unexpected and complex, the most beautiful melodies simple and inevitable.
W. H. Auden
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To choose what is difficult all one's days, as if it were easy, that is faith
W. H. Auden
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No good opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible.
W. H. Auden
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Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse.
W. H. Auden
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Though the great artists of the past could not change the course of history, it is only through their work that we are able to break bread with the dead, and without communion with the dead a fully human life is impossible.
W. H. Auden
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Base words are uttered only by the base
And can for such at once be understood;
But noble platitudes — ah, there's a case
Where the most careful scrutiny is needed
To tell a voice that's genuinely good
From one that's base but merely has succeeded.
W. H. Auden
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I'll love you, dear, I'll love you
Till China and Africa meet,
And the river jumps over the mountain
And the salmon sing in the street, I'll love you till the ocean
Is folded and hung up to dry
And the seven stars go squawking
Like geese about the sky.
W. H. Auden
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A million eyes, a million boots in line,
Without expression, waiting for a sign.
W. H. Auden
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Aphorisms are essentially an aristocratic genre of writing.
W. H. Auden
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To the man-in-the-street, who, I'm sorry to say,
Is a keen observer of life,
The word 'Intellectual' suggests straight away
A man who's untrue to his wife.
W. H. Auden
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Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.
W. H. Auden
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A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.
W. H. Auden
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Any one who attempts to translate from one tongue into another will know moods of despair when he feels he is wasting his time upon an impossible task. But, irrespective of success or failure, the mere attempt can teach a writer much about his own language which he would find it hard to learn elsewhere.
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
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art
life
law
day
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