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Get up very early and get going at once. In fact, work first and wash afterwards.

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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Literary Critic
Literary Historian
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Jórvík
Wystan Hugh Auden
Wystan Auden
Wystan H Auden
W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
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Going
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Wash
Afterwards
Early
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A man has his distinctive personal scent which his wife, his children and his dog can recognize. A crowd has a generalized stink. The public is odorless.
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The element of craftsmanship in poetry is obscured by the fact that all men are taught to speak and most to read and write, while very few men are taught to draw or paint or write music.
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Some books are undeservedly forgotten none are undeservedly remembered.
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No hero is mortal till he dies.
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Courses in prosody, rhetoric and comparative philology would be required of all students, and every student would have to select three courses out of courses in mathematics, natural history, geology, meteorology, archaeology, mythology, liturgics, cooking.
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Whatever you do, good or bad, people will always have something negative to say
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He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.
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There is a certain kind of person who is so dominated by the desire to be loved for himself alone that he has constantly to test those around him by tiresome behavior what he says and does must be admired, not because it is intrinsically admirable, but because it is his remark, his act. Does not this explain a good deal of avant-garde art?
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The closest modern equivalent to the Homeric hero is the ace fighter pilot.
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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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It's usually the stupid people that develop long illnesses. You need more than indolence and selfishness, you need endurance to make a good patient.
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From beginning to end Wilde performed his life and continued to do so even after fame had taken the plot out of his own hands.
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Time will say nothing but I told you so, Time only knows the price we have to pay If I could tell you I would let you know.
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Herds of reindeer move across Miles and miles of golden moss
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Money is the necessity that frees us from necessity. Of all novelists in any country, Trollope best understands the role of money. Compared with him even Balzac is a romantic.
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If there are any souls in hell, it is because that is where they insist on being.
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Time and fevers burn away Individual beauty from Thoughtful children, and the grave Proves the child ephemeral
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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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With the farming of a verse Make a vineyard of the curse
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Like everything which is not the involuntary result of fleeting emotion but the creation of time and will, any marriage, happy or unhappy, is infinitely more interesting than any romance, however passionate.
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