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Thou shalt not answer questionnaires Or quizzes upon world affairs, Nor with compliance Take any test. Thou shalt not sit with statisticians nor commit A social science.

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
Wystan Auden
Wystan H Auden
W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
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The camera may do justice to laughter, but must degrade sorrow.
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Sincerity is technique.
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You will be a poet because you will always be humiliated.
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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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Into this neutral air Where blind skyscrapers use Their full height to proclaim The strength of Collective Man, Each language pours its vain Competitive excuse.
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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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But once in a while the odd thing happens Once in a while the dream comes true And the whole pattern of life is altered Once in a while, the moon turns blue
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You must go to bed with friends or whores, where money makes up the difference in beauty or desire.
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Accurate scholarship can unearth the whole offence from luther untill noe that has driven a culture mad. From what occured at linz what huge imago made a psychopathic god. i and the public know what all schoolchildren learn those to whom evil is done do evil in return.
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We do not change as we grow up. The difference between the child and the adult is that the former doesn't know who he is and the latter does.
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There's only one good test of pornography. Get twelve normal men to read the book, and then ask them, ''Did you get an erection?'' If the answer is ''Yes'' from a majority of the twelve, then the book is pornographic.
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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.
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The poet marries the language, and out of this marriage the poem is born.
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Fate succumbs many a species: one alone jeopardises itself.
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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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Recipe for the upbringing of a poet: 'As much neurosis as the child can bear.
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Love each other or perish.
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Almost all of our relationships begin and most of them continue as forms of mutual exploitation, a mental or physical barter, to be terminated when one or both parties run out of goods.
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What we have not named as a symbol escapes our notice.
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Anyone who has a child today should train him to be either a physicist or a ballet dancer. Then he'll escape.
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