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Life is a picnic on a precipice.

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
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Poet
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University Teacher
Writer
Jórvík
Wystan Hugh Auden
Wystan Auden
Wystan H Auden
W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
Picnic
Picnics
Precipice
Life

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A small grove massacred to the last ash, An oak with heart-rot, give away the show: This great society is going to smash They cannot fool us with how fast they go, How much they cost each other and the gods. A culture is no better than its woods.
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It is a sad fact about our culture that a poet can earn much more money writing or talking about his art than he can by practicing it.
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Criticism should be a casual conversation.
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Sob, heavy world Sob as you spin, Mantled in mist Remote from the happy.
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Civilizations should be measured by the degree of diversity attained and the degree of unity retained.
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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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There are bills to be paid, machines to keep in repair, Irregular verbs to learn, the Time Being to redeem From insignificance.
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There are good books which are only for adults. There are no good books which are only for children.
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All the literati keep An imaginary friend.
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Time and fevers burn away Individual beauty from Thoughtful children, and the grave Proves the child ephemeral
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I and the public know What all schoolchildren learn, Those to whom evil is done Do evil in return.
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What we have not named as a symbol escapes our notice.
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When one looks into the window of a store which sells devotional art objects, one can't help wishing the iconoclasts had won.
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With the farming of a verse Make a vineyard of the curse
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Beauty, midnight, vision dies: Let the winds of dawn that blow Softly round your dreaming head Such a day of welcome show Eye and knocking heart may bless, Find our mortal world enough Noons of dryness find you fed By the involuntary powers, Nights of insult let you pass Watched by every human love.
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Genealogies are admirable things, provided they do not encourage the curious delusion that some families are older than others.
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Attacking bad books is not only a waste of time but also bad for the character. If I find a book really bad, the only interest I can derive from writing about it has to come from myself, from such display of intelligence, wit and malice as I can contrive. One cannot review a bad book without showing off.
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A vice in common can be the ground of a friendship but not a virtue in common. X and Y may be friends because they are both drunkards or womanizers but, if they are both sober and chaste, they are friends for some other reason.
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A person incapable of imaging another world than given to him by his senses would be subhuman, and a person who identifies his imaginary world with the world of sensory fact has become insane.
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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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