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I used to try and concentrate the poem so much that there wasn't a word that wasn't essential. This leads to becoming boring and constipated.
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
Boring
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History marched to the drums of a clear idea...
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You will be a poet because you will always be humiliated.
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Does God judge us by appearances? I Suspect that He does.
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As a poet, there is only one political duty, and that is to defend one's language from corruption.
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Say this city has ten million souls, Some are living in mansions, some are living in holes: Yet there’s no place for us, my dear, yet there’s no place for us.
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In addition to English, at least one ancient language, probably Greek or Hebrew, and two modern languages would be required.
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One of the most horrible, yet most important, discoveries of our age has been that, if you really wish to destroy a person and turn him into an automaton, the surest method is not physical torture, in the strict sense, but simply to keep him awake, i.e., in an existential relation to life without intermission.
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The most exciting rhythms seem unexpected and complex, the most beautiful melodies simple and inevitable.
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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 truly tragic kind of suffering is the kind produced and defiantly insisted upon by the hero himself so that, instead of making him better, it makes him worse and when he dies he is not reconciled to the law but defiant, that is, damned. Lear is not a tragic hero, Othello is.
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If it form the one landscape that we the inconstant ones Are consistently homesick for, this is chiefly Because it dissolves in water.
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