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The critical opinions of a writer should always be taken with a large grain of salt. For the most part, they are manifestations of his debate with himself as to what he should do next and what he should avoid.

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
Criticism
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The habit-forming pain, Mismanagement and grief: We must suffer them all again.
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There is no love There are only the various envies, all of them sad.
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You will be a poet because you will always be humiliated.
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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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Hemingway is terribly limited. His technique is good for short stories, for people who meet once in a bar very late at night, but do not enter into relations. But not for the novel.
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Men will pay large sums to whores for telling them they are not bores.
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Cats can be very funny, and have the oddest ways of showing they're glad to see you.
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To the man-in-the-street, who, I'm sorry to say, is a keen observer of life. The word Intellectual suggests straight away. A man who's untrue to his wife.
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Every high C accurately struck demolishes the theory that we are the irresponsible puppets of fate or chance.
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Attacking bad books is not only a waste of time but also bad for the character. If I find a book really bad, the only interest I can derive from writing about it has to come from myself, from such display of intelligence, wit and malice as I can contrive. One cannot review a bad book without showing off.
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There are bills to be paid, machines to keep in repair, Irregular verbs to learn, the Time Being to redeem From insignificance.
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The words of a dead man are modified in the guts of the living.
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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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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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One cannot review a bad book without showing off.
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Beauty, midnight, vision dies: Let the winds of dawn that blow Softly round your dreaming head Such a day of welcome show Eye and knocking heart may bless, Find our mortal world enough Noons of dryness find you fed By the involuntary powers, Nights of insult let you pass Watched by every human love.
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We were put on this Earth to help others. Why others were put here is beyond me.
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God bless the USA, so large, so friendly, and so rich.
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To ask the hard question is simple.
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We are all here on earth to help others what on earth the others are here for I don't know.
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