Quote

There are bills to be paid, machines to keep in repair, Irregular verbs to learn, the Time Being to redeem From insignificance.

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
Learn
Insignificance
Keep
Repair
Time
Verbs
Bills
Machines
Paid
Duty
Irregular
Responsibility
Redeem

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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?
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Blessed be all metrical rules that forbid automatic responses, force us to have second thoughts, free us from the fetters of Self.
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Few people take an interest in Iceland, but in those few the interest is passionate.
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The theater has never been any good since the actors became gentlemen.
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I sit in one of the dives On Fifty-second Street Uncertain and afraid As the clever hopes expire Of a low dishonest decade
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I will love you forever swears the poet. I find this easy to swear too. I will love you at 4:15 pm next Tuesday - Is that still as easy?
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Slavery is so intolerable a condition that the slave can hardly escape deluding himself into thinking that he is choosing to obey his master's commands when, in fact, he is obliged to. Most slaves of habit suffer from this delusion and so do some writers, enslaved by an all too personal style.
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When someone between twenty and forty says, apropos of a work of art, 'I know what I like,' he is really saying 'I have no taste of my own but accept the taste of my cultural milieu.
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Good can imagine Evil but Evil cannot imagine Good.
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Some books are undeservedly forgotten none are undeservedly remembered.
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The definition of prayer is paying careful and concentrated attention to something other than your own constructions.
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Shall memory restore The steps and the shore, The face and the meeting place.
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The words of a dead man are modified in the guts of the living.
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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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Aside from purely technical analysis, nothing can be said about music, except when it is bad when it is good, one can only listen and be grateful.
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Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.
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Men will pay large sums to whores for telling them they are not bores.
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There is no love There are only the various envies, all of them sad.
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Herds of reindeer move across Miles and miles of golden moss
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