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To read is to translate, for no two persons' experiences are the same. A bad reader is like a bad translator: he interprets literally when he ought to paraphrase and paraphrases when he ought to interpret literally.

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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The most exciting rhythms seem unexpected and complex, the most beautiful melodies simple and inevitable.
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Money is the necessity that frees us from necessity.
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Without communication with the dead, a fully human life is not possible.
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And make us as Newton was, who in his garden watching The apple falling towards England, became aware Between himself and her of an eternal tie.
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No good opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible.
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No hero is mortal till he dies.
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Blessed be all metrical rules that forbid automatic responses, force us to have second thoughts, free us from the fetters of Self.
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Like everything which is not the involuntary result of fleeting emotion but the creation of time and will, any marriage, happy or unhappy, is infinitely more interesting than any romance, however passionate.
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No person can be a great leader unless he takes genuine joy in the successes of those under him.
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Like love we don't know where or why Like love we cant compel or fly Like Love we often weep Like Love we seldom keep
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In times of joy, all of us wished we possessed a tail we could wag.
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There is no love There are only the various envies, all of them sad.
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The most important truths are likely to be those which society at that time least wants to hear.
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The Ogre does what ogres can, Deeds quite impossible for Man, But one prize is beyond his reach, The Ogre cannot master Speech: About a subjugated plain, Among its desperate and slain, The Ogre stalks with hands on hips, While drivel gushes from his lips.
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How happy the lot of the mathematician. He is judged solely by his peers, and the standard is so high that no colleague or rival can ever win a reputation he does not deserve.
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Geniuses are the luckiest of mortals because what they must do is the same as what they most want to do.
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Sincerity is technique.
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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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The windiest militant trash Important Persons shout Is not so crude as our wish: What mad Nijinsky wrote About Diaghilev Is true of the normal heart For the error bred in the bone Of each woman and each man Craves what it cannot have Not universal love But to be loved alone.
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If it form the one landscape that we the inconstant ones Are consistently homesick for, this is chiefly Because it dissolves in water.
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