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Recipe for the upbringing of a poet: 'As much neurosis as the child can bear.

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
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Caesar's double-bed is warm As an unimportant clerk Writes i do not like my work On a pink official form.
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Alone, alone, about the dreadful wood / Of conscious evil runs a lost mankind, / Dreading to find its Father.
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Murder is commoner among cooks than among members of any other profession.
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Between friends differences in taste or opinion are irritating in direct proportion to their triviality.
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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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It's frightening how easy it is to commit murder in America. Just a drink too much. I can see myself doing it. In England, one feels all the social restraints holding one back. But here, anything can happen.
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If we really want to live, we'd better start at once to try.
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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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Money cannot buy the fuel of love but is excellent kindling.
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To discover how to be human now is the reason we follow this star.
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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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Get up very early and get going at once. In fact, work first and wash afterwards.
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The poet who writes free verse is like Robinson Crusoe on his desert island: he must do all his cooking, laundry and darning for himself. In a few exceptional cases, this manly independence produces something original and impressive, but more often the result is squalor - dirty sheets on the unmade bed and empty bottles on the unswept floor.
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When I am in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a drawing room full of dukes.
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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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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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Dance, dance, dance till you drop.
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So long as we think of it objectively, time is Fate or Chance, the factor in our lives for which we are not responsible, and about which we can do nothing but when we begin to think of it subjectively, we feel responsible for our time, and the notion of punctuality arises.
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The countenances of children, like those of animals, are masks, not faces, for they have not yet developed a significant profile of their own.
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But he would have us most of all remember to be enthusiastic over the night. Not only for the sense of wonder it alone has to offer but also because it needs our love. For with sad eyes its delectable creatures look up and beg us dumbly to ask them to follow. They are exiles who long for a future that lies in our power.
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