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Drama began as the act of a whole community. Ideally, there would be no speculators. In practice, every member of the audience should feel like an understudy.

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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Literary Critic
Literary Historian
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Poet
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Jórvík
Wystan Hugh Auden
Wystan Auden
Wystan H Auden
W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
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What answer to the meaning of existence should one require beyond the right to exercise one's gifts?
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There is a certain kind of person who is so dominated by the desire to be loved for himself alone that he has constantly to test those around him by tiresome behavior what he says and does must be admired, not because it is intrinsically admirable, but because it is his remark, his act. Does not this explain a good deal of avant-garde art?
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The Americans are violently oral. That's why in America the mother is all-important and the father has no position at all -- isn't respected in the least. Even the American passion for laxatives can be explained as an oral manifestation. They want to get rid of any unpleasantness taken in through the mouth.
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Evil is unspectacular and always human, and shares our bed and eats at our own table.
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In the end, art is small beer. The really serious things are earning one's living so as not to be a parasite and loving one's neighbor.
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He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.
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Let us honor if we can the vertical man, though we value none but the horizontal one
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Of all possible subjects, travel is the most difficult for an artist, as it is the easiest for a journalist.
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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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Politics cannot be a science, because in politics theory and practice cannot be separated, and the sciences depend upon their separation.
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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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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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Long ago the accusations had begun, And suddenly knew by whom it had been judged
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The camera may do justice to laughter, but must degrade sorrow.
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Recipe for the upbringing of a poet: 'As much neurosis as the child can bear.
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Dance till the stars come down from the rafters Dance, Dance, Dance 'till you drop.
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The stars are dead. The animals will not look: We are left alone with our day, and the time is short, and History to the defeated May say Alas but cannot help nor pardon.
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Moreover, if great men are the only hope of the Evolutionary Process, they are morally bound to rule over the masses for their own good -- we are all here on earth to help others: what on earth the others are here for, I don't know -- and the masses have no right whatsoever to resist them.
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History marched to the drums of a clear idea...
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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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