Quote

Almost all of our relationships begin and most of them continue as forms of mutual exploitation, a mental or physical barter, to be terminated when one or both parties run out of goods.

W. H. Auden

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W. H. Auden
Age: 66 †
Born: 1907
Born: February 21
Died: 1973
Died: September 28
Author
Composer
Essayist
Librettist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Playwright
Poet
Screenwriter
University Teacher
Writer
Jórvík
Wystan Hugh Auden
Wystan Auden
Wystan H Auden
W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
Relationship
Relationships
Almost
Mental
Bartering
Party
Forms
Terminated
Running
Relation
Barter
Money
Continue
Exploitation
Form
Physical
Parties
Love
Begin
Mutual
Couple
Goods

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In life the loser's score is always zero.
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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.
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Music can be made anywhere, is invisible and does not smell.
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To be happy means to be free, not from pain or fear, but from care or anxiety.
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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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Most people enjoy the sight of their own handwriting as they enjoy the smell of their own farts.
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Cathedrals, luxury liners laden with souls, Holding to the east their hulls of stone.
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A daydream is a meal at which images are eaten. Some of us are gourmets, some gourmands, and a good many take their images precooked out of a can and swallow them down whole, absent-mindedly and with little relish.
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The definition of prayer is paying careful and concentrated attention to something other than your own constructions.
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I think the first prerequisite to civilization is an ability to make polite conversation.
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Dance, dance, dance till you drop.
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Every American poet feels that the whole responsibility for contemporary poetry has fallen upon his shoulders, that he is a literary aristocracy of one.
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It's frightening how easy it is to commit murder in America. Just a drink too much. I can see myself doing it. In England, one feels all the social restraints holding one back. But here, anything can happen.
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As a rule, it was the pleasure-haters who became unjust.
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We were put on this Earth to help others. Why others were put here is beyond me.
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Dance till the stars come down from the rafters Dance, Dance, Dance 'till you drop.
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God may reduce you on Judgment Day to tears of shame, reciting by heart the poems you would have written, had your life been good.
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Nobody knows what the cause is, though some pretend they do it like some hidden assassin waiting to strike at you. Childless women get it, and men when they retire it as if there had to be some outlet for their foiled creative fire.
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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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Behind the corpse in the reservoir, behind the ghost on the links, Behind the lady who dances and the man who madly drinks, Under the look of fatigue, the attack of migraine and the sigh There is always another story, there is more than meets the eye.
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