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W.H. Auden Quotes

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Famous W.H. Auden Quotes

“Funeral Blues Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone, Silence the pianos and with muffled drum Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come. Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead Scribbling on the sky the message He is Dead, Put crêpe bows round the white necks of the public doves, Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves. He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong. The stars are not wanted now; put out every one, Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun; Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood; For nothing now can ever come to any good.”

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Book:Another Time
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“The More Loving One Looking up at the stars, I know quite well That, for all they care, I can go to hell, But on earth indifference is the least We have to dread from man or beast. How should we like it were stars to burn With a passion for us we could not return? If equal affection cannot be, Let the more loving one be me. Admirer as I think I am Of stars that do not give a damn, I cannot, now I see them, say I missed one terribly all day. Were all stars to disappear or die, I should learn to look at an empty sky And feel its total dark sublime, Though this might take me a little time.”

LovePoetry
Book:Collected Shorter Poems, 1927-1957
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“If desire were really one to one, self to self, there would never be a problem of infidelity, but desire will always, without confusion, demand a particular class, Caring for a unique object is an illusion, but the feeling must be unique, and though that feeling may not be natural, it is duty. You must love your neighbour like yourself, uniquely. From the personal point of view, sexual desire, because of its impersonal and unchanging character, is a comic contradiction. The relation between every pair of lovers is unique, but in bet they can only do what all mammals do. All the relation in friendship a relationship of spirit, can be unique. In sexual relationship love the only uniqueness can be fidelity.”

LoveDesireSexUniqueUniversalFidelityTwo Gentlemen Of VeronaComedy Of Errors
Book:Lectures on Shakespeare
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“When someone begins to the lose the glamour they had for us on our first meeting them, we tell ourselves that we have been deceived; that our fantasy cast a halo over them which they are unworthy to bear. It is always possible, however, that the reverse is the case: that our disappointment is due to a failure of our own sensibility which lacks the strength to maintain itself at the acuteness with which it began. People may really be what we first thought them, and what we subsequently think of as the disappointing reality may be the person obscured by the staleness of our senses.”

LoveTragedySensesLove At First SightInfatuationFirst Impressions
Author:W.H. Auden
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