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A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us.

W. H. Auden

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W. H. Auden
Age: 66 †
Born: 1907
Born: February 21
Died: 1973
Died: September 28
Author
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Librettist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
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Jórvík
Wystan Hugh Auden
Wystan Auden
Wystan H Auden
W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
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To pray is to pay attention to something or someone other than oneself.
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With the farming of a verse Make a vineyard of the curse
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You must go to bed with friends or whores, where money makes up the difference in beauty or desire.
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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.
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There's only one good test of pornography. Get twelve normal men to read the book, and then ask them, ''Did you get an erection?'' If the answer is ''Yes'' from a majority of the twelve, then the book is pornographic.
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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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As biological organisms made of matter, we are subject to the laws of physics and biology: as conscious persons who create our own history we are free to decide what that history shall be. Without science, we should have no notion of equality without art, no notion of liberty.
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The glacier knocks in the cupboard, The desert sighs in the bed, And the crack in the teacup opens A lane to the land of the dead.
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Fame often makes a writer vain, but seldom makes him proud.
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Few people take an interest in Iceland, but in those few the interest is passionate.
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The habit-forming pain, Mismanagement and grief: We must suffer them all again.
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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.
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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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A verbal art like poetry is reflective it stops to think. Music is immediate, it goes on to become.
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Acts of injustice done Between the setting and the rising sun In history lie like bones, each one.
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Between friends differences in taste or opinion are irritating in direct proportion to their triviality.
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It's better to say, 'I'm suffering,' than to say, 'This landscape is ugly.
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The parlour cars and Pullmans are packed also with scented assassins, salad-eaters who murder on milk.
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Human language is mythological and metaphorical by nature.
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I will love you forever swears the poet. I find this easy to swear too. I will love you at 4:15 pm next Tuesday - Is that still as easy?
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