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Money is the necessity that frees us from necessity. Of all novelists in any country, Trollope best understands the role of money. Compared with him even Balzac is a romantic.

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
Money
Frees
Best
Understands
Country
Novelists
Even
Compared
Necessity
Romantic
Role
Trollope
Roles
Balzac

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Whatever the field under discussion, those who engage in debate must not only believe in each other's good faith, but also in their capacity to arrive at the truth.
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The Americans are violently oral. That's why in America the mother is all-important and the father has no position at all -- isn't respected in the least. Even the American passion for laxatives can be explained as an oral manifestation. They want to get rid of any unpleasantness taken in through the mouth.
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Herds of reindeer move across Miles and miles of golden moss
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Let me see what I wrote so I know what I think
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Murder is commoner among cooks than among members of any other profession.
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The theater has never been any good since the actors became gentlemen.
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Those to whom evil is doneDo evil in return.
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To me Art's subject is the human clay, / And landscape but a background to a torso / All Cezanne's apples I would give away / For one small Goya or a Daumier.
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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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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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To have a sense of sin means to feel guilty at there being an ethical choice to make, a guilt which, however good I may become, remains unchanged.
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So long as we think of it objectively, time is Fate or Chance, the factor in our lives for which we are not responsible, and about which we can do nothing but when we begin to think of it subjectively, we feel responsible for our time, and the notion of punctuality arises.
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a culture is no better than its woods
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Doom is dark and deeper than any sea-dingle.
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I'll love you till the ocean Is folded and hung up to dry And the seven stars go squawking Like geese about the sky.
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I just try to put the thing out and hope somebody will read it. Someone says: 'Whom do you write for?' I reply: 'Do you read me?' If they say 'Yes,' I say, 'Do you like it?' If they say 'No,' then I say, 'I don't write for you.'
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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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Before people complain of the obscurity of modern poetry, they should first examine their consciences and ask themselves with how many people and on how many occasions they have genuinely and profoundly shared some experience with another...
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About suffering they were never wrong, The Old Masters.
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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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