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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
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Jórvík
Wystan Hugh Auden
Wystan Auden
Wystan H Auden
W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
Paid
Duty
Irregular
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Redeem
Learn
Insignificance
Keep
Repair
Time
Verbs
Bills
Machines
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Weep for the lives your wishes never led.
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Poetry is the only art people haven't learned to consume like soup.
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What we have not named as a symbol escapes our notice.
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To my generation no other English poet seemed so perfectly to express the sensibility of a male adolescent. If I do not now turn to him very often, I am eternally grateful to him for the joy he gave me in my youth.
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Every high C accurately struck demolishes the theory that we are the irresponsible puppets of fate or chance.
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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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Courses in prosody, rhetoric and comparative philology would be required of all students, and every student would have to select three courses out of courses in mathematics, natural history, geology, meteorology, archaeology, mythology, liturgics, cooking.
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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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A poet can write about a man slaying a dragon, but not about a man pushing a button that releases a bomb.
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The slogan of Hell: Eat or be eaten. The slogan of Heaven: Eat and be eaten.
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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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Machines are beneficial to the degree that they eliminate the need for labor, harmful to the degree that they eliminate the need for skill.
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Into this neutral air Where blind skyscrapers use Their full height to proclaim The strength of Collective Man, Each language pours its vain Competitive excuse.
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There are three cardinal rules - don't take somebody else's boyfriend unless you've been specifically invited to do so, don't take a drink without being asked, and keep a scrupulous accounting in financial matters.
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Between friends differences in taste or opinion are irritating in direct proportion to their triviality.
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Drama is based on the Mistake.
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Dance till the stars come down from the rafters Dance, Dance, Dance 'till you drop.
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Earth, receive an honored guest William Yeats is laid to rest. Let the Irish vessel lie Emptied of its poetry.
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Lovers have lived so long with giants and elves, they won't believe again in their own size.
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We are lived by powers we pretend to understand.
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