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When I am in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a drawing room full of dukes.

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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Jórvík
Wystan Hugh Auden
Wystan Auden
Wystan H Auden
W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
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'Healing,' Papa would tell me, 'is not a science, but the intuitive art of wooing nature.'
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What is a Professor of Poetry? How can poetry be professed?
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The primary function of poetry, as of all the arts, is to make us more aware of ourselves and the world around us. I do not know if such increased awareness makes us more moral or more efficient. I hope not. I think it makes us more human, and I am quite certain it makes us more difficult to deceive.
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A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.
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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.
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Lay your sleeping head, my love, Human on my faithless arm.
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To read is to translate, for no two persons' experiences are the same. A bad reader is like a bad translator: he interprets literally when he ought to paraphrase and paraphrases when he ought to interpret literally.
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History is, strictly speaking, the study of questions the study of answers belongs to anthropology and sociology.
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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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Every poet has his dream reader: mine keeps a look out for curious prosodic fauna like bacchics and choriambs.
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Language is the mother, not the handmaiden, of thought words will tell you things you never thought or felt before.
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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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Most people enjoy the sight of their own handwriting as they enjoy the smell of their own farts.
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There is a great deal of difference in believing something still, and believing it again.
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There is a certain kind of person who is so dominated by the desire to be loved for himself alone that he has constantly to test those around him by tiresome behavior what he says and does must be admired, not because it is intrinsically admirable, but because it is his remark, his act. Does not this explain a good deal of avant-garde art?
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If equal affection cannot be, let the more loving be me.
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The element of craftsmanship in poetry is obscured by the fact that all men are taught to speak and most to read and write, while very few men are taught to draw or paint or write music.
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It's usually the stupid people that develop long illnesses. You need more than indolence and selfishness, you need endurance to make a good patient.
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Words are for those with promises to keep.
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Caesar's double-bed is warm As an unimportant clerk Writes i do not like my work On a pink official form.
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