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Be subtle, various, ornamental, clever, And do not listen to those critics ever Whose crude provincial gullets crave in books Plain cooking made still plainer by plain cooks.

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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Literary Critic
Literary Historian
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Poet
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University Teacher
Writer
Jórvík
Wystan Hugh Auden
Wystan Auden
Wystan H Auden
W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
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If equal affection cannot be, let the more loving be me.
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Aphorisms are essentially an aristocratic genre of writing. The aphorist does not argue or explain, he asserts and implicit in his assertion is a conviction that he is wiser and more intelligent than his readers.
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I don't get acting jobs because of my looks.
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It is, for example, axiomatic that we should all think of ourselves as being more sensitive than other people because, when we are insensitive in our dealings with others, we cannot be aware of it at the time: conscious insensitivity is a self-contradiction.
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What is a Professor of Poetry? How can poetry be professed?
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To hunt for symbols in a fairy tale is absolutely fatal.
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Beloved, we are always in the wrong, Handling so clumsily our stupid lives, Suffering too little or too long, Too careful even in our selfish loves: The decorative manias we obey Die in grimaces round us every day, Yet through their tohu-bohu comes a voice Which utters an absurd command - Rejoice.
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All the rest is silence On the other side of the wall, And the silence ripeness, And the ripeness all.
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Like everything which is not the involuntary result of fleeting emotion but the creation of time and will, any marriage, happy or unhappy, is infinitely more interesting than any romance, however passionate.
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In headaches and in worry Vaguely life leaks away, And Time will have his fancy To-morrow or today.
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A poem is a verbal artifact which must be as skillfully and solidly constructed as a table or a motorcycle.
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With the farming of a verse Make a vineyard of the curse
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The true men of action in our time, those who transform the world, are not the politicians and statesmen, but the scientists
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A professor is someone who talks in someone else's sleep.
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Poetry is the only art people haven't learned to consume like soup.
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No good opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible.
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Life is a picnic on a precipice.
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A god who is both self-sufficient and content to remain so could not interest us enough to raise the question of his existence.
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We till shadowed days are done, We must weep and sing Duty's conscious wrong, The Devil in the clock
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