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The only way to spend New Year's Eve is either quietly with friends or in a brothel. Otherwise when the evening ends and people pair off, someone is bound to be left in tears.
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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Jórvík
Wystan Hugh Auden
Wystan Auden
Wystan H Auden
W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
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To pray is to pay attention to something or someone other than oneself.
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There is a great deal of difference in believing something still, and believing it again.
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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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But if a stranger in the train asks me my occupation, I never answer writer for fear that he may go on to ask me what I write, and to answer poetry would embarrass us both, for we both know that nobody can earn a living simply by writing poetry.
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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.
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The trees encountered on a country stroll Reveal a lot about that country's soul ... A culture is no better than its woods.
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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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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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And make us as Newton was, who in his garden watching The apple falling towards England, became aware Between himself and her of an eternal tie.
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Words have no word for words that are not true.
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Human language is mythological and metaphorical by nature.
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We are lived by powers we pretend to understand.
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Human beings are, necessarily, actors who...can be divided...into the sane who know they are acting and the mad who do not.
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Every autobiography is concerned with two characters, a Don Quixote, the Ego, and a Sancho Panza, the Self.
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Before people complain of the obscurity of modern poetry, they should first examine their consciences and ask themselves with how many people and on how many occasions they have genuinely and profoundly shared some experience with another...
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The lights must never go out, The music must always play
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Civilizations should be measured by the degree of diversity attained and the degree of unity retained.
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Lovers have lived so long with giants and elves, they won't believe again in their own size.
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Clear, unscaleable ahead, Rise the mountains of instead From whose cold, cascading streams None may drink except in dreams
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The desires of the heart are as crooked as corkscrews Not to be born is the best for man The second best is a formal order The dance's pattern, dance while you can. Dance, dance, for the figure is easy The tune is catching and will not stop Dance till the stars come down from the rafters Dance, dance, dance till you drop.
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