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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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Wystan Hugh Auden
Wystan Auden
Wystan H Auden
W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
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We who must die demand a miracle. How could the Eternal do a temporal act, The Infinite become a finite fact? Nothing can save us that is possible: We who must die demand a miracle.
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In the end, art is small beer. The really serious things are earning one's living so as not to be a parasite and loving one's neighbor.
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I said earlier that I do not believe an artist's life throws much light upon his works. I do believe, however, that, more often than most people realize, his works may throw light upon his life. An artist with certain imaginative ideas in his head may then involve himself in relationships which are congenial to them.
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Behind you swiftly the figure comes softly, The spot on your skin is a shocking disease.
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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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In a world of prayer, we are all equal in the sense that each of us is a unique person, with a unique perspective on the world, a member of a class of one.
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You know there are no secrets in America. It's quite different in England, where people think of a secret as a shared relation between two people.
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A poet can write about a man slaying a dragon, but not about a man pushing a button that releases a bomb.
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No poet or novelist wishes he were the only one who ever lived, but most of them wish they were the only one alive, and quite a number fondly believe their wish has been granted.
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I know nothing, except what everyone knows - if there when Grace dances, I should dance.
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Hunger allows no choice.
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Desire, even in its wildest tantrums, can neither persuade me it is love nor stop me from wishing it were.
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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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Death is the sound of distant thunder at a picnic.
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Cathedrals, luxury liners laden with souls, Holding to the east their hulls of stone.
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Human beings are, necessarily, actors who...can be divided...into the sane who know they are acting and the mad who do not.
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The Ogre does what ogres can, Deeds quite impossible for Man, But one prize is beyond his reach, The Ogre cannot master Speech: About a subjugated plain, Among its desperate and slain, The Ogre stalks with hands on hips, While drivel gushes from his lips.
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To ask the hard question is simple.
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