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Weep for the lives your wishes never led.

W. H. Auden

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W. H. Auden
Age: 66 †
Born: 1907
Born: February 21
Died: 1973
Died: September 28
Author
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Literary Critic
Literary Historian
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Jórvík
Wystan Hugh Auden
Wystan Auden
Wystan H Auden
W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
Never
Life
Weep
Wishes
Hope
Wish
Lives

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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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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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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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Now the leaves are falling fast, Nurse's flowers will not last Nurses to their graves are gone, And the prams go rolling on.
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The desires of the heart are as crooked as corkscrews Not to be born is the best for man The second best is a formal order The dance's pattern, dance while you can. Dance, dance, for the figure is easy The tune is catching and will not stop Dance till the stars come down from the rafters Dance, dance, dance till you drop.
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Between the ages of twenty and forty we are engaged in the process of discovering who we are, which involves learning the differences between accidental limitations which it is our duty to outgrow and the necessary limitations of our nature beyond which we cannot trespass with impunity.
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Over the tea-cups and in the square the tongue has its desire Still waters run deep, my dear, there's never smoke without fire.
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Poetry might be defined as the clear expression of mixed feelings.
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Anyone who has a child today should train him to be either a physicist or a ballet dancer. Then he'll escape.
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Poetry is the only art people haven't learned to consume like soup.
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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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An unmanly sort of man whose love life seems to have been largely confined to crying in laps and playing mouse.
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Dance, dance, dance till you drop.
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All good art is in the nature of a letter written to amuse a sick friend. Too much art, particularly in our time, is only a letter written to oneself.
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Recipe for the upbringing of a poet: 'As much neurosis as the child can bear.
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A poet feels the impulse to create a work of art when the passive awe provoked by an event is transformed into a desire to express that awe in a rite of worship.
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Doom is dark and deeper than any sea-dingle.
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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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