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All the literati keep An imaginary friend.

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
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Poet
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Writer
Jórvík
Wystan Hugh Auden
Wystan Auden
Wystan H Auden
W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
Friend
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Literati
Imaginary
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Left to itself the masculine imagination has very little appreciation for the here and now it prefers to dwell on what is absent, on what has been or may be. If men are more punctual than women, it is because they know that, without the external discipline of clock time, they would never get anything done.
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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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Drama is based on the Mistake.
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One cannot walk through an assembly factory and not feel that one is in Hell.
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Hemingway is terribly limited. His technique is good for short stories, for people who meet once in a bar very late at night, but do not enter into relations. But not for the novel.
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We are not commanded (or forbidden) to love our mates, our children, our friends, our country because such affections come naturally to us and are good in themselves, although we may corrupt them. We are commanded to love our neighbor because our natural attitude toward the other is one of either indifference or hostility.
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You know there are no secrets in America. It's quite different in England, where people think of a secret as a shared relation between two people.
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Hunger allows no choice.
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the child unlucky in his little State, Some hearth where freedom is excluded, A hive whose honey is fear and worry, Feels calmer now and somehow assured of escape
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Marriage is rarely bliss But, surely it would be worse As particles to pelt At thousands of miles per sec About a universe In which a lover's kiss Would either not be felt Or break the loved one's neck.
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Political history is far too criminal to be a fit subject of study for the young. Children should acquire their heroes and villians from fiction.
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A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us.
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Proper names are poetry in the raw. Like all poetry they are untranslatable.
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I used to try and concentrate the poem so much that there wasn't a word that wasn't essential. This leads to becoming boring and constipated.
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In headaches and in worry Vaguely life leaks away, And Time will have his fancy To-morrow or today.
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Good can imagine Evil but Evil cannot imagine Good.
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The poet who writes free verse is like Robinson Crusoe on his desert island: he must do all his cooking, laundry and darning for himself. In a few exceptional cases, this manly independence produces something original and impressive, but more often the result is squalor - dirty sheets on the unmade bed and empty bottles on the unswept floor.
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All wishes, whatever their apparent content, have the same and unvarying meaning: I refuse to be what I am.
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I don't get acting jobs because of my looks.
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A verbal art like poetry is reflective it stops to think. Music is immediate, it goes on to become.
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