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In life the loser's score is always zero.
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
Life
Loser
Zero
Score
Losing
Always
More quotes by W. H. Auden
Language is the mother, not the handmaiden, of thought words will tell you things you never thought or felt before.
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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.
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A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us.
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A dead man who never caused others to die seldom rates a statue.
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Cathedrals, luxury liners laden with souls, Holding to the east their hulls of stone.
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Human beings are, necessarily, actors who...can be divided...into the sane who know they are acting and the mad who do not.
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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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All works of art are commissioned in the sense that no artist can create one by a simple act of will but must wait until what he believes to be a good idea for a work comes to him.
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It is nonsense to speak of 'higher' and 'lower' pleasures. To a hungry man it is, rightly, more important that he eat than that he philosophize.
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Men will pay large sums to whores for telling them they are not bores.
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Murder is unique in that it abolishes the party it injures, so that society has to take the place of the victim and on his behalf demand atonement or grant forgiveness it is the one crime in which society has a direct interest.
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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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One of the troubles of our times is that we are all, I think, precocious as personalities and backward as characters.
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The ear tends to be lazy, craves the familiar and is shocked by the unexpected the eye, on the other hand, tends to be impatient, craves the novel and is bored by repetition.
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The surest sign that a man has a genuine taste of his own is that he is uncertain of it.
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There's always another story. There's more than meets the eye.
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In a game, just losing is almost as satisfying as just winning... In life the loser's score is always zero.
W. H. Auden
The chances are that, in the course of his lifetime, the major poet will write more bad poems than the minor, simply because major poets write a lot.
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The critical opinions of a writer should always be taken with a large grain of salt. For the most part, they are manifestations of his debate with himself as to what he should do next and what he should avoid.
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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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