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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.

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
Writing
Older
Never
Writer
Asks
Four
Age
Write
Frightfully
Might
Sixty
Important
Younger

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There's always another story. There's more than meets the eye.
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One cannot review a bad book without showing off.
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God may reduce you on Judgment Day to tears of shame, reciting by heart the poems you would have written, had your life been good.
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The words of a dead man are modified in the guts of the living.
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Time and fevers burn away Individual beauty from Thoughtful children, and the grave Proves the child ephemeral
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The sky is darkening like a stain Something is going to fall like rain And it won't be flowers
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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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Some writers confuse authenticity, which they ought always to aim at, with originality, which they should never bother about.
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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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Love each other or perish.
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As a poet, there is only one political duty, and that is to defend one's language from corruption.
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Dance, dance, dance till you drop.
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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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But he would have us most of all remember to be enthusiastic over the night. Not only for the sense of wonder it alone has to offer but also because it needs our love. For with sad eyes its delectable creatures look up and beg us dumbly to ask them to follow. They are exiles who long for a future that lies in our power.
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Now is the age of anxiety.
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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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Human language is mythological and metaphorical by nature.
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In a land which is fully settled, most men must accept their local environment or try to change it by political means only the exceptionally gifted or adventurous can leave to seek his fortune elsewhere. In America, on the other hand, to move on and make a fresh start somewhere else is still the normal reaction to dissatisfaction and failure.
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A poet must never make a statement simply because it is sounds poetically exciting he must also believe it to be true.
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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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