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Soft as the earth is mankind and both need to be altered.

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
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Poet
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University Teacher
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Jórvík
Wystan Hugh Auden
Wystan Auden
Wystan H Auden
W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
Mankind
Earth
Need
Needs
Altered
Soft

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The condition of mankind is, and always has been, so miserable and depraved that, if anyone were to say to the poet: For God's sake stop singing and do something useful like putting on the kettle or fetching bandages, what just reason could he give for refusing?
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The lights must never go out, The music must always play
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He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.
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The slogan of Hell: Eat or be eaten. The slogan of Heaven: Eat and be eaten.
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It's frightfully important for a writer to be his age, not to be younger or older than he is. One might ask, What should I write at the age of sixty-four, but never, What should I write in 1940.
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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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All works of art are commissioned in the sense that no artist can create one by a simple act of will but must wait until what he believes to be a good idea for a work comes to him.
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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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We are not commanded (or forbidden) to love our mates, our children, our friends, our country because such affections come naturally to us and are good in themselves, although we may corrupt them. We are commanded to love our neighbor because our natural attitude toward the other is one of either indifference or hostility.
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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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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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Some writers confuse authenticity, which they ought always to aim at, with originality, which they should never bother about.
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Time and fevers burn away Individual beauty from Thoughtful children, and the grave Proves the child ephemeral
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Every man carries with him through life a mirror, as unique and impossible to get rid of as his shadow.
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Drama is based on the Mistake.
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Goodness is easier to recognize than to define.
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Art is our chief means of breaking bread with the dead.
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One cannot review a bad book without showing off.
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Great art is clear thinking about mixed feelings.
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A craftsman knows in advance what the finished result will be, while the artist knows only what it will be when he has finished it.
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