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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
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
Losing
Always
Life
Loser
Zero
Score

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It's frightfully important for a writer to be his age, not to be younger or older than he is. One might ask, What should I write at the age of sixty-four, but never, What should I write in 1940.
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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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We who must die demand a miracle. How could the Eternal do a temporal act, The Infinite become a finite fact? Nothing can save us that is possible: We who must die demand a miracle.
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Even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot Where the dogs go on with their doggy life
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A poet can write about a man slaying a dragon, but not about a man pushing a button that releases a bomb.
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The element of craftsmanship in poetry is obscured by the fact that all men are taught to speak and most to read and write, while very few men are taught to draw or paint or write music.
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What the poet says has never been said before, but, once he has said it, his readers recognize its validity for themselves.
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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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Music is the best means we have of digesting time.
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The commonest ivory tower is that of the average man, the state of passivity towards experience.
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Sexual fidelity is more important in a homosexual relationship than in any other. In other relationships there are a variety of ties. But here, fidelity is the only bond.
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You need not see what someone is doing to know if it is his vocation, you have only to watch his eyes: a cook mixing a sauce, a surgeon making a primary incision, a clerk completing a bill of lading wear the same rapt expression, forgetting themselves in a function. How beautiful it is, that eye-on-the-obje ct look.
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Time will say nothing but I told you so, Time only knows the price we have to pay If I could tell you I would let you know.
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What is a Professor of Poetry? How can poetry be professed?
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You will be a poet because you will always be humiliated.
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How should we like it were stars to burn With a passion for us we could not return? If equal affection cannot be, Let the more loving one be me.
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Without Art, we should have no notion of the sacred without Science, we should always worship false gods.
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You must go to bed with friends or whores, where money makes up the difference in beauty or desire.
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Clear, unscaleable ahead, Rise the mountains of instead From whose cold, cascading streams None may drink except in dreams
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Long ago the accusations had begun, And suddenly knew by whom it had been judged
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