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

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Fame often makes a writer vain, but seldom makes him proud.
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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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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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Beloved, we are always in the wrong, Handling so clumsily our stupid lives, Suffering too little or too long, Too careful even in our selfish loves: The decorative manias we obey Die in grimaces round us every day, Yet through their tohu-bohu comes a voice Which utters an absurd command - Rejoice.
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The most difficult problem in personal knowledge, whether of oneself or of others, is the problem of guessing when to think as a historian and when to think as an anthropologist.
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It is, for example, axiomatic that we should all think of ourselves as being more sensitive than other people because, when we are insensitive in our dealings with others, we cannot be aware of it at the time: conscious insensitivity is a self-contradiction.
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Clear, unscaleable ahead, Rise the mountains of instead From whose cold, cascading streams None may drink except in dreams
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Almost all of our relationships begin and most of them continue as forms of mutual exploitation, a mental or physical barter, to be terminated when one or both parties run out of goods.
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Caesar's double-bed is warm As an unimportant clerk Writes i do not like my work On a pink official form.
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Lost in a haunted wood, Children afraid of the night Who have never been happy or good.
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Be subtle, various, ornamental, clever, And do not listen to those critics ever Whose crude provincial gullets crave in books Plain cooking made still plainer by plain cooks.
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Great art is clear thinking about mixed feelings.
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Oh, how I wish that Orwell were still alive, so that I could read his comments on contemporary events!
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One can only blaspheme if one believes.
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