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One of the most horrible, yet most important, discoveries of our age has been that, if you really wish to destroy a person and turn him into an automaton, the surest method is not physical torture, in the strict sense, but simply to keep him awake, i.e., in an existential relation to life without intermission.

W. H. Auden

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W. H. Auden
Age: 66 †
Born: 1907
Born: February 21
Died: 1973
Died: September 28
Author
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Essayist
Librettist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Playwright
Poet
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Jórvík
Wystan Hugh Auden
Wystan Auden
Wystan H Auden
W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
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Keep
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Existential
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Simply
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Really
Turns
Horrible
Intermission
Life
Wish
Relation
Surest

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Laziness acknowledges the relation of the present to the past but ignores its relation to the future impatience acknowledge its relation to the future but ignores its relation to the past neither the lazy nor the impatient man, that is, accepts the present instant in its full reality and so cannot love his neighbour completely.
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In a game, just losing is almost as satisfying as just winning... In life the loser's score is always zero.
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All sins tend to be addictive, and the terminal point of addiction is damnation.
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The surest sign that a man has a genuine taste of his own is that he is uncertain of it.
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O plunge your hands in water, Plunge them in up to the wrist Stare, stare in the basin And wonder what you've missed.
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Soft as the earth is mankind and both need to be altered.
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Let me see what I wrote so I know what I think
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O let not Time deceive you, You cannot conquer Time.
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The camera may do justice to laughter, but must degrade sorrow.
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A shilling life will give you all the facts.
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A poet can write about a man slaying a dragon, but not about a man pushing a button that releases a bomb.
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All I have is a voice to undo the folded lie, the romantic lie in the brain of the sensual man-in-the-street and the lie of Authority whose buildings grope the sky: There is no such thing as the State and no one exists alone Hunger allows no choice to the citizen or the police We must love one another or die.
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Criticism should be a casual conversation.
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Private faces in public places Are wiser and nicer Than public faces in private places.
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The older lives like not to be stood in rows or at right angles.
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The lights must never go out, The music must always play
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All works of art are commissioned in the sense that no artist can create one by a simple act of will but must wait until what he believes to be a good idea for a work comes to him.
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A dead man who never caused others to die seldom rates a statue.
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One can only blaspheme if one believes.
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