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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
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Jórvík
Wystan Hugh Auden
Wystan Auden
Wystan H Auden
W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
Picnic
Picnics
Precipice
Life

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The surest sign that a man has a genuine taste of his own is that he is uncertain of it.
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Music can be made anywhere, is invisible and does not smell.
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Death is the sound of distant thunder at a picnic.
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One cannot review a bad book without showing off.
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The poet who writes free verse is like Robinson Crusoe on his desert island: he must do all his cooking, laundry and darning for himself. In a few exceptional cases, this manly independence produces something original and impressive, but more often the result is squalor - dirty sheets on the unmade bed and empty bottles on the unswept floor.
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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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The stars are not wanted now, put out every one Pack up the moon & dismantle the sun.
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What is a Professor of Poetry? How can poetry be professed?
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Aphorisms are essentially an aristocratic genre of writing. The aphorist does not argue or explain, he asserts and implicit in his assertion is a conviction that he is wiser and more intelligent than his readers.
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August for the people and their favourite islands. Daily the steamers sidle up to meet The effusive welcome of the pier.
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History is, strictly speaking, the study of questions the study of answers belongs to anthropology and sociology.
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To hunt for symbols in a fairy tale is absolutely fatal.
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Most people call something profound, not because it is near some important truth but because it is distant from ordinary life. Thus, darkness is profound to the eye, silence to the ear what-is-not is the profundity of what-is.
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Narcissus does not fall in love with his reflection because it is beautiful, but because it is his. If it were his beauty that enthralled him, he would be set free in a few years by its fading.
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It's impossible to represent a saint [in Art]. It becomes boring. Perhaps because he is, like the Saturday Evening Post people, inthe position of having almost infinitely free will.
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A poet, qua poet, has only one political duty, namely, in his own writing to set an example of the correct use of his mother tongue, which is always being corrupted. When words lose their meaning, physical force takes over.
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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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