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Literary confessors are contemptible, like beggars who exhibit their sores for money, but not so contemptible as the public that buys their books.

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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Wystan Hugh Auden
Wystan Auden
Wystan H Auden
W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
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In the end, art is small beer. The really serious things are earning one's living so as not to be a parasite and loving one's neighbor.
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Earth, receive an honored guest William Yeats is laid to rest. Let the Irish vessel lie Emptied of its poetry.
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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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Fate succumbs many a species: one alone jeopardises itself.
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Oh, how I wish that Orwell were still alive, so that I could read his comments on contemporary events!
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A person incapable of imaging another world than given to him by his senses would be subhuman, and a person who identifies his imaginary world with the world of sensory fact has become insane.
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Herds of reindeer move across Miles and miles of golden moss
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Pleasure is by no means an infallible critical guide, but it is the least fallible.
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Poetry makes nothing happen.
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Shall memory restore The steps and the shore, The face and the meeting place.
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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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The glacier knocks in the cupboard, The desert sighs in the bed, And the crack in the teacup opens A lane to the land of the dead.
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Fame often makes a writer vain, but seldom makes him proud.
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Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.
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No hero is mortal till he dies.
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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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Long ago the accusations had begun, And suddenly knew by whom it had been judged
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The sky is darkening like a stain Something is going to fall like rain And it won't be flowers
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Whatever you do, good or bad, people will always have something negative to say
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Christmas and Easter can be subjects for poetry, but Good Friday, like Auschwitz, cannot. The reality is so horrible it is not surprising that people should have found it a stumbling block to faith.
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