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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
Driven
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But if a stranger in the train asks me my occupation, I never answer writer for fear that he may go on to ask me what I write, and to answer poetry would embarrass us both, for we both know that nobody can earn a living simply by writing poetry.
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To discover how to be human now is the reason we follow this star.
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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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Yet no one hears his own remarks as prose.
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I see little hope for a peaceful world until men are excluded from the realm of foreign policy altogether and all decisions concerning international relations are reserved for women, preferably married ones.
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For time is inches And the heart's changes, Where ghost has haunted Lost and wanted.
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There is a great deal of difference in believing something still, and believing it again.
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One can only blaspheme if one believes.
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One cannot review a bad book without showing off.
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Genealogies are admirable things, provided they do not encourage the curious delusion that some families are older than others.
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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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Slavery is so intolerable a condition that the slave can hardly escape deluding himself into thinking that he is choosing to obey his master's commands when, in fact, he is obliged to. Most slaves of habit suffer from this delusion and so do some writers, enslaved by an all too personal style.
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All the literati keep An imaginary friend.
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As a rule, it was the pleasure-haters who became unjust.
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