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I will love you forever swears the poet. I find this easy to swear too. I will love you at 4:15 pm next Tuesday - Is that still as easy?

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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Essayist
Librettist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
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Poet
Screenwriter
University Teacher
Writer
Jórvík
Wystan Hugh Auden
Wystan Auden
Wystan H Auden
W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
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Tuesday
Love
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Poet
Forever

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As a rule, it was the pleasure-haters who became unjust.
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The poet marries the language, and out of this marriage the poem is born.
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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.
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Routine, in an intelligent man, is a sign of ambition.
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A poet, qua poet, has only one political duty, namely, in his own writing to set an example of the correct use of his mother tongue, which is always being corrupted. When words lose their meaning, physical force takes over.
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Those who will not reason, perish in the act. Those who will not act, perish for that reason.
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The friends who met here and embraced are gone, Each to his own mistake.
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A tremendous number of people in America work very hard at something that bores them. Even a rich man thinks he has to go down to the office everyday. Not because he likes it but because he can't think of anything else to do.
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Few people take an interest in Iceland, but in those few the interest is passionate.
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The relation of faith between subject and object is unique in every case. Hundreds may believe, but each has to believe by himself.
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To save your world you asked this man to die would this man, could he see you now, ask why?
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To be free is often to be lonely.
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Young people, who are still uncertain of their identity, often try on a succession of masks in the hope of finding the one which suits them - the one, in fact, which is not a mask.
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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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Soft as the earth is mankind and both need to be altered.
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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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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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It is nonsense to speak of 'higher' and 'lower' pleasures. To a hungry man it is, rightly, more important that he eat than that he philosophize.
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The definition of prayer is paying careful and concentrated attention to something other than your own constructions.
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The basic stimulus to the intelligence is doubt, a feeling that the meaning of an experience is not self-evident.
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