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A tremendous number of people in America work very hard at something that bores them. Even a rich man thinks he has to go down to the office everyday. Not because he likes it but because he can't think of anything else to do.
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
Think
Else
Tremendous
Thinking
America
Likes
People
Anything
Thinks
Hard
Everyday
Even
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Work
Office
Something
Numbers
Men
Rich
Bores
More quotes by W. H. Auden
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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All poets adore explosions, thunderstorms, tornadoes, conflagrations, ruins, scenes of spectacular carnage. The poetic imagination is not at all a desirable quality in a statesman.
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Anyone who has a child today should train him to be either a physicist or a ballet dancer. Then he'll escape.
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A man is a form of life that dreams in order to act and acts in order to dream.
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Shall memory restore The steps and the shore, The face and the meeting place.
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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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Water is the soul of the Earth.
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Man is a history-making creature, who can neither repeat his past, nor leave it behind.
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You need not see what someone is doing to know if it is his vocation, you have only to watch his eyes: a cook mixing a sauce, a surgeon making a primary incision, a clerk completing a bill of lading wear the same rapt expression, forgetting themselves in a function. How beautiful it is, that eye-on-the-obje ct look.
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Of course,Behaviourism 'works'. So does torture.
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Encased in talent like a uniform, The rank of every poet is well known They can amaze us like a thunderstorm, Or die so young, or live for years alone.
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The most exciting rhythms seem unexpected and complex, the most beautiful melodies simple and inevitable.
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Hemingway is terribly limited. His technique is good for short stories, for people who meet once in a bar very late at night, but do not enter into relations. But not for the novel.
W. H. Auden
Long ago the accusations had begun, And suddenly knew by whom it had been judged
W. H. Auden
Between friends differences in taste or opinion are irritating in direct proportion to their triviality.
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August for the people and their favourite islands. Daily the steamers sidle up to meet The effusive welcome of the pier.
W. H. Auden
We were put on this Earth to help others. Why others were put here is beyond me.
W. H. Auden
Each in the cell of himself is almost convinced of his freedom.
W. H. Auden
The image of myself which I try to create in my own mind in order that I may love myself is very different from the image which I try to create in the minds of others in order that they may love me.
W. H. Auden
Far from his illness The wolves ran on through the evergreen forests, The peasant river was untempted by the fashionable quays By mourning tongues The death of the poet was kept from his poems.
W. H. Auden
