Quote

Nobody knows what the cause is, though some pretend they do it like some hidden assassin waiting to strike at you. Childless women get it, and men when they retire it as if there had to be some outlet for their foiled creative fire.

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
Women
Cancer
Outlet
Men
Cause
Retire
Like
Nobody
Outlets
Fire
Retiring
Causes
Strike
Foiled
Creative
Pretend
Childless
Waiting
Hidden
Assassin
Though
Strikes
Assassins

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Drama is based on the Mistake.
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A poem is a verbal artifact which must be as skillfully and solidly constructed as a table or a motorcycle.
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No poet or novelist wishes he were the only one who ever lived, but most of them wish they were the only one alive, and quite a number fondly believe their wish has been granted.
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We are all here on earth to help others.
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I and the public know What all schoolchildren learn, Those to whom evil is done Do evil in return.
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Aphorisms are essentially an aristocratic genre of writing. The aphorist does not argue or explain, he asserts and implicit in his assertion is a conviction that he is wiser and more intelligent than his readers.
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A poor American feels guilty at being poor, but less guilty than an American rentier who has inherited wealth but is doing nothingto increase it what can the latter do but take to drink and psychoanalysis?
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For time is inches And the heart's changes, Where ghost has haunted Lost and wanted.
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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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A craftsman knows in advance what the finished result will be, while the artist knows only what it will be when he has finished it.
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All sins tend to be addictive, and the terminal point of addiction is damnation.
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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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Politics cannot be a science, because in politics theory and practice cannot be separated, and the sciences depend upon their separation.
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Thou shalt not answer questionnaires Or quizzes upon world affairs, Nor with compliance Take any test. Thou shalt not sit with statisticians nor commit A social science.
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No being can make another one happy.
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There is no love There are only the various envies, all of them sad.
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The commonest ivory tower is that of the average man, the state of passivity towards experience.
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Political history is far too criminal to be a fit subject of study for the young. Children should acquire their heroes and villians from fiction.
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In a world of prayer, we are all equal in the sense that each of us is a unique person, with a unique perspective on the world, a member of a class of one.
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The closest modern equivalent to the Homeric hero is the ace fighter pilot.
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