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We were put on this earth to make things.

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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Jórvík
Wystan Hugh Auden
Wystan Auden
Wystan H Auden
W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
Earth
Make
Things

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A writer is a maker, not a man of action: his private life is of no concern to anybody but himself, his family and his friends.
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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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Perhaps there is only one cardinal sin: impatience. Because of impatience we were driven out of Paradise, because of impatience we cannot return.
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We all have these places where shy humiliations gambol on sunny afternoons.
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To read is to translate, for no two persons' experiences are the same. A bad reader is like a bad translator: he interprets literally when he ought to paraphrase and paraphrases when he ought to interpret literally.
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Out on the lawn I lie in bed, Vega conspicuous overhead.
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All that we are not stares back at what we are.
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Love each other or perish.
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Criticism should be a casual conversation.
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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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No being can make another one happy.
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Drama began as the act of a whole community. Ideally, there would be no speculators. In practice, every member of the audience should feel like an understudy.
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The most exciting rhythms seem unexpected and complex, the most beautiful melodies simple and inevitable.
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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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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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We are all here on earth to help others.
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Every poet has his dream reader: mine keeps a look out for curious prosodic fauna like bacchics and choriambs.
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A verbal art like poetry is reflective it stops to think. Music is immediate, it goes on to become.
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Intellectual disgrace Stares from every human face, And the seas of pity lie Locked and frozen in each eye.
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