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The commonest ivory tower is that of the average man, the state of passivity towards experience.
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
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Those to whom evil is doneDo evil in return.
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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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Of course,Behaviourism 'works'. So does torture.
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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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History marched to the drums of a clear idea...
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Our sufferings and weaknesses, in so far as they are personal, are of no literary interest whatsoever. They are only interesting in so far as we can see them as typical of the human condition.
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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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There's always another story. There's more than meets the eye.
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The law cannot forgive, for the law has not been wronged, only broken only persons can be wronged. The law can pardon, but it can only pardon what it has the power to punish.
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Men will pay large sums to whores for telling them they are not bores.
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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.
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God may reduce you on Judgment Day to tears of shame, reciting by heart the poems you would have written, had your life been good.
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One cannot review a bad book without showing off.
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Music can be made anywhere, is invisible and does not smell.
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The basic stimulus to the intelligence is doubt, a feeling that the meaning of an experience is not self-evident.
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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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It is, for example, axiomatic that we should all think of ourselves as being more sensitive than other people because, when we are insensitive in our dealings with others, we cannot be aware of it at the time: conscious insensitivity is a self-contradiction.
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All pity is self-pity.
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As a poet, there is only one political duty, and that is to defend one's language from corruption.
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Criticism should be a casual conversation.
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