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Routine, in an intelligent man, is a sign of ambition.

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
Ambition
Intelligent
Men
Routine
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Though one cannot always Remember exactly why one has been happy, There is no forgetting that one was.
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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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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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And none will hear the postman’s knock Without a quickening of the heart. For who can bear to feel himself forgotten?
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You know there are no secrets in America. It's quite different in England, where people think of a secret as a shared relation between two people.
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The nightingales are sobbing in The orchards of our mothers, And hearts that we broke long ago Have long been breaking others Tears are round, the sea is deep: Roll them overboard and sleep.
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Almost all of our relationships begin and most of them continue as forms of mutual exploitation, a mental or physical barter, to be terminated when one or both parties run out of goods.
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What answer to the meaning of existence should one require beyond the right to exercise one's gifts?
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Time will say nothing but I told you so.
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Precisely because we do not communicate by singing, a song can be out of place but not out of character it is just as credible that a stupid person should sing beautifully as that a clever person should do so.
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A writer is a maker, not a man of action: his private life is of no concern to anybody but himself, his family and his friends.
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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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Those to whom evil is doneDo evil in return.
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To pray is to pay attention to something or someone other than oneself.
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An unmanly sort of man whose love life seems to have been largely confined to crying in laps and playing mouse.
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Cats can be very funny, and have the oddest ways of showing they're glad to see you.
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Health is the state about which medicine has nothing to say.
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Drama began as the act of a whole community. Ideally, there would be no speculators. In practice, every member of the audience should feel like an understudy.
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We honor founders of these starving cities, Whose honor is the image of our sorrow.
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