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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
Composer
Essayist
Librettist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Playwright
Poet
Screenwriter
University Teacher
Writer
Jórvík
Wystan Hugh Auden
Wystan Auden
Wystan H Auden
W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
Listen
Plain
Books
Cooks
Stills
Subtle
Still
Clever
Plainer
Ever
Cooking
Ornamental
Book
Critics
Provincial
Made
Various
Crude
Whose
Crave

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It is a sad fact about our culture that a poet can earn much more money writing or talking about his art than he can by practicing it.
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About suffering they were never wrong, The Old Masters How well they understood Its human position how it takes place While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along.
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In a game, just losing is almost as satisfying as just winning... In life the loser's score is always zero.
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The actors today really need the whip hand. They're so lazy. They haven't got the sense of pride in their profession that the less socially elevated musical comedy and music hall people or acrobats have. The theater has never been any good since the actors became gentlemen.
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Learn from your dreams what you lack.
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Blessed be all metrical rules that forbid automatic responses, force us to have second thoughts, free us from the fetters of Self.
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A poet feels the impulse to create a work of art when the passive awe provoked by an event is transformed into a desire to express that awe in a rite of worship.
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Aside from purely technical analysis, nothing can be said about music, except when it is bad when it is good, one can only listen and be grateful.
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We are lived by powers we pretend to understand.
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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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Follow, poet, follow right To the bottom of the night, With your unconstraining voice Still persuade us to rejoice With the farming of a verse Make a vineyard of the curse, Sing of human unsuccess In a rapture of distress In the deserts of the heart Let the healing fountain start, In the prison of his days Teach the free man how to praise.
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You shall love your crooked neighbour, with your crooked heart.
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The sky is darkening like a stain Something is going to fall like rain And it won't be flowers
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There are good books which are only for adults. There are no good books which are only for children.
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Without Art, we should have no notion of the sacred without Science, we should always worship false gods.
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The center that I cannot find is known to my unconscious mind.
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Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.
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Murder is commoner among cooks than among members of any other profession.
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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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In times of joy, all of us wished we possessed a tail we could wag.
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