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Choice of attention - to pay attention to this and ignore that - is to the inner life what choice of action is to the outer. In both cases, a man is responsible for his choice and must accept the consequences, whatever they may be.

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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Money is the necessity that frees us from necessity. Of all novelists in any country, Trollope best understands the role of money. Compared with him even Balzac is a romantic.
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The only reason the Protestants and Catholics have given up the idea of universal domination is because they've realised they can't get away with it.
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But he would have us most of all remember to be enthusiastic over the night. Not only for the sense of wonder it alone has to offer but also because it needs our love. For with sad eyes its delectable creatures look up and beg us dumbly to ask them to follow. They are exiles who long for a future that lies in our power.
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Water is the soul of the Earth.
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In times of joy, all of us wished we possessed a tail we could wag.
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Composing mortals with immortal fire.
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We are all here on earth to help others what on earth the others are here for I don't know.
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No good opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible.
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Pleasure is by no means an infallible critical guide, but it is the least fallible.
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Every autobiography is concerned with two characters, a Don Quixote, the Ego, and a Sancho Panza, the Self.
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The sky is darkening like a stain Something is going to fall like rain And it won't be flowers
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If there are any souls in hell, it is because that is where they insist on being.
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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.
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The actors today really need the whip hand. They're so lazy. They haven't got the sense of pride in their profession that the less socially elevated musical comedy and music hall people or acrobats have. The theater has never been any good since the actors became gentlemen.
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No being can make another one happy.
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Some writers confuse authenticity, which they ought always to aim at, with originality, which they should never bother about.
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In life the loser's score is always zero.
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As a rule, it was the pleasure-haters who became unjust.
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The commonest ivory tower is that of the average man, the state of passivity towards experience.
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the child unlucky in his little State, Some hearth where freedom is excluded, A hive whose honey is fear and worry, Feels calmer now and somehow assured of escape
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