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Of course, Behaviourism 'works'. So does torture. Give me a no-nonsense, down-to-earth behaviourist, a few drugs, and simple electrical appliances, and in six months I will have him reciting the Athanasian Creed in public.

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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Wystan Hugh Auden
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What the mass media offers is not popular art, but entertainment which is intended to be consumed like food, forgotten, and replaced by a new dish.
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Cats can be very funny, and have the oddest ways of showing they're glad to see you.
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We were put on this Earth to help others. Why others were put here is beyond me.
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By mourning tongues The death of the poet was kept from his poems.
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Herds of reindeer move across Miles and miles of golden moss
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You owe it to all of us all get on with what you're good at.
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Between the ages of twenty and forty we are engaged in the process of discovering who we are, which involves learning the differences between accidental limitations which it is our duty to outgrow and the necessary limitations of our nature beyond which we cannot trespass with impunity.
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A poor American feels guilty at being poor, but less guilty than an American rentier who has inherited wealth but is doing nothingto increase it what can the latter do but take to drink and psychoanalysis?
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Composing mortals with immortal fire.
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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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Man is a history-making creature, who can neither repeat his past, nor leave it behind.
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Art is born of humiliation.
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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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Those who will not reason, perish in the act. Those who will not act, perish for that reason.
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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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Even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot Where the dogs go on with their doggy life
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If it form the one landscape that we the inconstant ones Are consistently homesick for, this is chiefly Because it dissolves in water.
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Follow, poet, follow right To the bottom of the night, With your unconstraining voice Still persuade us to rejoice With the farming of a verse Make a vineyard of the curse, Sing of human unsuccess In a rapture of distress In the deserts of the heart Let the healing fountain start, In the prison of his days Teach the free man how to praise.
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Detective stories have nothing to do with works of art.
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You know there are no secrets in America. It's quite different in England, where people think of a secret as a shared relation between two people.
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