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Perhaps there is only one cardinal sin: impatience. Because of impatience we were driven out of Paradise, because of impatience we cannot return.
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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Time will say nothing but I told you so.
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Men will pay large sums to whores for telling them they are not bores.
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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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No person can be a great leader unless he takes genuine joy in the successes of those under him.
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The glacier knocks in the cupboard, The desert sighs in the bed, And the crack in the teacup opens A lane to the land of the dead.
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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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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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If the most significant characteristic of man is the complex of biological needs he shares with all members of his species, then the best lives for the writer to observe are those in which the role of natural necessity is clearest, namely, the lives of the very poor.
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For time is inches And the heart's changes, Where ghost has haunted Lost and wanted.
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Even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot Where the dogs go on with their doggy life
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I think the first prerequisite to civilization is an ability to make polite conversation.
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We do not change as we grow up. The difference between the child and the adult is that the former doesn't know who he is and the latter does.
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It's impossible to represent a saint [in Art]. It becomes boring. Perhaps because he is, like the Saturday Evening Post people, inthe position of having almost infinitely free will.
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All the literati keep An imaginary friend.
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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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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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All I have is a voice.
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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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The definition of prayer is paying careful and concentrated attention to something other than your own constructions.
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Oh, how I wish that Orwell were still alive, so that I could read his comments on contemporary events!
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