Quote

Choice of attention - to pay attention to this and ignore that - is to the inner life what choice of action is to the outer. In both cases, a man is responsible for his choice and must accept the consequences, whatever they may be.

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
Choices
Consequence
Attention
Inner
Whatever
Responsible
Action
Accept
May
Choice
Outer
Must
Pay
Ignore
Men
Accepting
Consequences
Life
Cases
Investing

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Behind the corpse in the reservoir, behind the ghost on the links, Behind the lady who dances and the man who madly drinks, Under the look of fatigue, the attack of migraine and the sigh There is always another story, there is more than meets the eye.
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The eye likes novelty, but the ear craves familiarity.
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When one looks into the window of a store which sells devotional art objects, one can't help wishing the iconoclasts had won.
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Man desires to be free and he desires to feel important. This places him in a dilemma, for the more he emancipates himself from necessity the less important he feels.
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A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us.
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Poetry is the only art people haven't learned to consume like soup.
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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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Evil is unspectacular and always human, and shares our bed and eats at our own table.
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The way to read a fairy tale is to throw yourself in.
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The actors today really need the whip hand. They're so lazy. They haven't got the sense of pride in their profession that the less socially elevated musical comedy and music hall people or acrobats have. The theater has never been any good since the actors became gentlemen.
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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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Drama began as the act of a whole community. Ideally, there would be no speculators. In practice, every member of the audience should feel like an understudy.
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To be free is often to be lonely.
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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 only reason the Protestants and Catholics have given up the idea of universal domination is because they've realised they can't get away with it.
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Life is a picnic on a precipice.
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Lost in a haunted wood, Children afraid of the night Who have never been happy or good.
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It is a sad fact about our culture that a poet can earn much more money writing or talking about his art than he can by practicing it.
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The most important truths are likely to be those which society at that time least wants to hear.
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