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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
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Wystan Hugh Auden
Wystan Auden
Wystan H Auden
W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
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Poetry might be defined as the clear expression of mixed feelings.
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It takes little talent to see what lies under one's nose, a good deal to know in what direction to point that organ.
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One cannot walk through an assembly factory and not feel that one is in Hell.
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What we have not named as a symbol escapes our notice.
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The friends who met here and embraced are gone, Each to his own mistake.
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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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Criticism should be a casual conversation.
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Caesar's double-bed is warm As an unimportant clerk Writes i do not like my work On a pink official form.
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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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One rational voice is dumb: over a grave The household of Impulse mourns one dearly loved. Sad is Eros, builder of cities, And weeping anarchic Aphrodite.
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May it not be that, just as we have to have faith in Him, God has to have faith in us and, considering the history of the human race so far, may it not be that 'faith' is even more difficult for Him than it is for us?
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There are three cardinal rules - don't take somebody else's boyfriend unless you've been specifically invited to do so, don't take a drink without being asked, and keep a scrupulous accounting in financial matters.
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The class distinctions proper to a democratic society are not those of rank or money, still less, as is apt to happen when these are abandoned, of race, but of age.
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Though one cannot always Remember exactly why one has been happy, There is no forgetting that one was.
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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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How should we like it were stars to burn With a passion for us we could not return? If equal affection cannot be, Let the more loving one be me.
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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.
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I don't think the mystical experience can be verbalized. When the ego disappears, so does power over language.
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A poet must never make a statement simply because it is sounds poetically exciting he must also believe it to be true.
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