Quote

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.

W. H. Auden

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W. H. Auden
Age: 66 †
Born: 1907
Born: February 21
Died: 1973
Died: September 28
Author
Composer
Essayist
Librettist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Playwright
Poet
Screenwriter
University Teacher
Writer
Jórvík
Wystan Hugh Auden
Wystan Auden
Wystan H Auden
W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
Strength
Collectives
Full
Collective
Language
Competitive
Use
Height
Skyscrapers
Men
Vain
Pours
Excuse
Skyscraper
Blind
Proclaim
Air
Neutral

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An unmanly sort of man whose love life seems to have been largely confined to crying in laps and playing mouse.
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The most difficult problem in personal knowledge, whether of oneself or of others, is the problem of guessing when to think as a historian and when to think as an anthropologist.
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My face looks like a wedding-cake left out in the rain.
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Acts of injustice done Between the setting and the rising sun In history lie like bones, each one.
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Money is the necessity that frees us from necessity. Of all novelists in any country, Trollope best understands the role of money. Compared with him even Balzac is a romantic.
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There's always another story. There's more than meets the eye.
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In life the loser's score is always zero.
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In a land which is fully settled, most men must accept their local environment or try to change it by political means only the exceptionally gifted or adventurous can leave to seek his fortune elsewhere. In America, on the other hand, to move on and make a fresh start somewhere else is still the normal reaction to dissatisfaction and failure.
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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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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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Evil is unspectacular and always human, and shares our bed and eats at our own table.
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What the poet says has never been said before, but, once he has said it, his readers recognize its validity for themselves.
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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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There are not many English novels which deserve to be called great: Parade's End is one of them.
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Whatever you do, good or bad, people will always have something negative to say
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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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Whatever the field under discussion, those who engage in debate must not only believe in each other's good faith, but also in their capacity to arrive at the truth.
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No person can be a great leader unless he takes genuine joy in the successes of those under him.
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Music is the best means we have of digesting time.
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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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