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An unmanly sort of man whose love life seems to have been largely confined to crying in laps and playing mouse.

W. H. Auden

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W. H. Auden
Age: 66 †
Born: 1907
Born: February 21
Died: 1973
Died: September 28
Author
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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
Life
Crying
Cry
Unmanly
Whose
Laps
Playing
Mouse
Sort
Lap
Seems
Mice
Men
Confined
Love
Largely

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The critical opinions of a writer should always be taken with a large grain of salt. For the most part, they are manifestations of his debate with himself as to what he should do next and what he should avoid.
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Love each other or perish.
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The only reason the Protestants and Catholics have given up the idea of universal domination is because they've realised they can't get away with it.
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Evil is unspectacular and always human, and shares our bed and eats at our own table.
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The desires of the heart are as crooked as corkscrews Not to be born is the best for man The second best is a formal order The dance's pattern, dance while you can. Dance, dance, for the figure is easy The tune is catching and will not stop Dance till the stars come down from the rafters Dance, dance, dance till you drop.
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The only way to spend New Year's Eve is either quietly with friends or in a brothel. Otherwise when the evening ends and people pair off, someone is bound to be left in tears.
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To read is to translate, for no two persons' experiences are the same. A bad reader is like a bad translator: he interprets literally when he ought to paraphrase and paraphrases when he ought to interpret literally.
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Harrow the house of the dead look shining at New styles of architecture, a change of heart.
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The slogan of Hell: Eat or be eaten. The slogan of Heaven: Eat and be eaten.
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We are lived by powers we pretend to understand.
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Happy the hare at morning, for she cannot read The hunter's waking thoughts.
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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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The Ogre does what ogres can, Deeds quite impossible for Man, But one prize is beyond his reach, The Ogre cannot master Speech: About a subjugated plain, Among its desperate and slain, The Ogre stalks with hands on hips, While drivel gushes from his lips.
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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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One of the most horrible, yet most important, discoveries of our age has been that, if you really wish to destroy a person and turn him into an automaton, the surest method is not physical torture, in the strict sense, but simply to keep him awake, i.e., in an existential relation to life without intermission.
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A craftsman knows in advance what the finished result will be, while the artist knows only what it will be when he has finished it.
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Desire, even in its wildest tantrums, can neither persuade me it is love nor stop me from wishing it were.
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A tremendous number of people in America work very hard at something that bores them. Even a rich man thinks he has to go down to the office everyday. Not because he likes it but because he can't think of anything else to do.
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Why doesn't the United States take over the monarchy and unite with England? England does have important assets. Naturally the longer you wait, the more they will dwindle. At least you could use it for a summer resort instead of Maine.
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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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