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There has been a vast output of critical studies in contemporary poetry, some of them first rate, but I do not think that , as a rule, a poet should read them.

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
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W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
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The nightingales are sobbing in The orchards of our mothers, And hearts that we broke long ago Have long been breaking others Tears are round, the sea is deep: Roll them overboard and sleep.
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Great art is clear thinking about mixed feelings.
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To save your world you asked this man to die would this man, could he see you now, ask why?
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Intellectual disgrace Stares from every human face, And the seas of pity lie Locked and frozen in each eye.
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If the most significant characteristic of man is the complex of biological needs he shares with all members of his species, then the best lives for the writer to observe are those in which the role of natural necessity is clearest, namely, the lives of the very poor.
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The stars are not wanted now, put out every one Pack up the moon & dismantle the sun.
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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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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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A false enchantment can all too easily last a lifetime.
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Between friends differences in taste or opinion are irritating in direct proportion to their triviality.
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Weep for the lives your wishes never led.
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The habit-forming pain, Mismanagement and grief: We must suffer them all again.
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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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May it not be that, just as we have to have faith in Him, God has to have faith in us and, considering the history of the human race so far, may it not be that 'faith' is even more difficult for Him than it is for us?
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Human language is mythological and metaphorical by nature.
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We are all here on earth to help others what on earth the others are here for I don't know.
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Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.
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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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'Healing,' Papa would tell me, 'is not a science, but the intuitive art of wooing nature.'
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