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There is a certain kind of person who is so dominated by the desire to be loved for himself alone that he has constantly to test those around him by tiresome behavior what he says and does must be admired, not because it is intrinsically admirable, but because it is his remark, his act. Does not this explain a good deal of avant-garde art?

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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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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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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Poetry makes nothing happen.
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What is a Professor of Poetry? How can poetry be professed?
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Swans in the winter air A white perfection have
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We are lived by powers we pretend to understand.
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The glacier knocks in the cupboard, The desert sighs in the bed, And the crack in the teacup opens A lane to the land of the dead.
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It's a pity I am so impatient and careless, as any ordinary person could learn all the techniques of photography in a week. It is the democratic art, i.e. technical skill is practically eliminated - the more foolproof cameras become with focusing and exposure gadgets the better - and artistic quality depends only on choice of subject.
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God is Love, we are taught as children to believe. But when we first begin to get some inkling of how He loves us, we are repelled it seems so cold, indeed, not love at all as we understand the word.
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A man has his distinctive personal scent which his wife, his children and his dog can recognize. A crowd has a generalized stink. The public is odorless.
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Murder is unique in that it abolishes the party it injures, so that society has to take the place of the victim and on his behalf demand atonement or grant forgiveness it is the one crime in which society has a direct interest.
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Perhaps there is only one cardinal sin: impatience. Because of impatience we were driven out of Paradise, because of impatience we cannot return.
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We were put on this Earth to help others. Why others were put here is beyond me.
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In a game, just losing is almost as satisfying as just winning... In life the loser's score is always zero.
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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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There is a great deal of difference in believing something still, and believing it again.
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Lay your sleeping head, my love, Human on my faithless arm.
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Every poet has his dream reader: mine keeps a look out for curious prosodic fauna like bacchics and choriambs.
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One cannot walk through an assembly factory and not feel that one is in Hell.
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Time and fevers burn away Individual beauty from Thoughtful children, and the grave Proves the child ephemeral
W. H. Auden