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I'll love you till the ocean Is folded and hung up to dry And the seven stars go squawking Like geese about the sky.

W. H. Auden

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W. H. Auden
Age: 66 †
Born: 1907
Born: February 21
Died: 1973
Died: September 28
Author
Composer
Essayist
Librettist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Playwright
Poet
Screenwriter
University Teacher
Writer
Jórvík
Wystan Hugh Auden
Wystan Auden
Wystan H Auden
W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
Seven
Ocean
Stars
Folded
Love
Geese
Like
Dry
Hung
Till
Sky

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Anyone who has a child today should train him to be either a physicist or a ballet dancer. Then he'll escape.
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Poetry is the only art people haven't learned to consume like soup.
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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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To ask the hard question is simple.
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History is, strictly speaking, the study of questions the study of answers belongs to anthropology and sociology.
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In the eyes of others a man is a poet if he has written one good poem. In his own he is only a poet at the moment when he is making his last revision to a new poem. The moment before, he was still only a potential poet the moment after, he is a man who has ceased to write poetry, perhaps forever.
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Of course, Behaviourism 'works'. So does torture. Give me a no-nonsense, down-to-earth behaviourist, a few drugs, and simple electrical appliances, and in six months I will have him reciting the Athanasian Creed in public.
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Geniuses are the luckiest of mortals because what they must do is the same as what they most want to do.
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There must always be two kinds of art: escape-art, for man needs escape as he needs food and deep sleep, and parable-art, that art which shall teach man to unlearn hatred and learn love.
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Routine, in an intelligent man, is a sign of ambition.
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In addition to English, at least one ancient language, probably Greek or Hebrew, and two modern languages would be required.
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If equal affection cannot be, let the more loving be me.
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There are bills to be paid, machines to keep in repair, Irregular verbs to learn, the Time Being to redeem From insignificance.
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Lay your sleeping head, my love, Human on my faithless arm.
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To be free is often to be lonely.
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Dance till the stars come down from the rafters Dance, Dance, Dance 'till you drop.
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There's only one good test of pornography. Get twelve normal men to read the book, and then ask them, ''Did you get an erection?'' If the answer is ''Yes'' from a majority of the twelve, then the book is pornographic.
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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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August for the people and their favourite islands. Daily the steamers sidle up to meet The effusive welcome of the pier.
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The image of myself which I try to create in my own mind in order that I may love myself is very different from the image which I try to create in the minds of others in order that they may love me.
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