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Of course,Behaviourism 'works'. So does torture.

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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Doe
Torture

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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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All that we are not stares back at what we are.
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Organic growth is a cyclical process it is just as true to say that the oak is a potential acorn as it is to say the acorn is a potential oak. But the process of writing a poem, of making any art object, is not cyclical but a motion in one direction toward a definite end.
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Art is born of humiliation.
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I said earlier that I do not believe an artist's life throws much light upon his works. I do believe, however, that, more often than most people realize, his works may throw light upon his life. An artist with certain imaginative ideas in his head may then involve himself in relationships which are congenial to them.
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Those to whom evil is doneDo evil in return.
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It is already possible to imagine a society in which the majority of the population, that is to say, its laborers, will have almost as much leisure as in earlier times was enjoyed by the aristocracy. When one recalls how aristocracies in the past actually behaved, the prospect is not cheerful.
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The windiest militant trash Important Persons shout Is not so crude as our wish: What mad Nijinsky wrote About Diaghilev Is true of the normal heart For the error bred in the bone Of each woman and each man Craves what it cannot have Not universal love But to be loved alone.
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Herds of reindeer move across Miles and miles of golden moss
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My face looks like a wedding-cake left out in the rain.
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The commonest ivory tower is that of the average man, the state of passivity towards experience.
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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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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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I will love you forever swears the poet. I find this easy to swear too. I will love you at 4:15 pm next Tuesday - Is that still as easy?
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To pray is to pay attention to something or someone other than oneself.
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We would rather be ruined than changed. We would rather die in our dread than climb the cross of the moment and let our illusions die.
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No good opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible.
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Christmas and Easter can be subjects for poetry, but Good Friday, like Auschwitz, cannot. The reality is so horrible it is not surprising that people should have found it a stumbling block to faith.
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What living occasion can, Be just to the absent?
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Goodness is easier to recognize than to define.
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