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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.

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
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Literary Critic
Literary Historian
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Jórvík
Wystan Hugh Auden
Wystan Auden
Wystan H Auden
W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
Cannot
Relation
Accepts
Past
Neither
Impatience
Men
Completely
Neighbour
Love
Accepting
Impatient
Present
Laziness
Full
Lazy
Future
Acknowledge
Acknowledges
Reality
Instant
Ignores

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Beauty, midnight, vision dies: Let the winds of dawn that blow Softly round your dreaming head Such a day of welcome show Eye and knocking heart may bless, Find our mortal world enough Noons of dryness find you fed By the involuntary powers, Nights of insult let you pass Watched by every human love.
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A craftsman knows in advance what the finished result will be, while the artist knows only what it will be when he has finished it.
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Get up very early and get going at once. In fact, work first and wash afterwards.
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Death is the sound of distant thunder at a picnic.
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Long ago the accusations had begun, And suddenly knew by whom it had been judged
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Clear, unscaleable ahead, Rise the mountains of instead From whose cold, cascading streams None may drink except in dreams
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Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.
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Dogmatic theological statements are neither logical propositions nor poetic utterances. They are ''shaggy dog'' stories they have a point, but he who tries too hard to get it will miss it.
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Does God judge us by appearances? I Suspect that He does.
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In headaches and in worry Vaguely life leaks away, And Time will have his fancy To-morrow or today.
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Human beings are, necessarily, actors who...can be divided...into the sane who know they are acting and the mad who do not.
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Accurate scholarship can unearth the whole offence from luther untill noe that has driven a culture mad. From what occured at linz what huge imago made a psychopathic god. i and the public know what all schoolchildren learn those to whom evil is done do evil in return.
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The chances are that, in the course of his lifetime, the major poet will write more bad poems than the minor, simply because major poets write a lot.
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All that we are not stares back at what we are.
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Most people call something profound, not because it is near some important truth but because it is distant from ordinary life. Thus, darkness is profound to the eye, silence to the ear what-is-not is the profundity of what-is.
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Like everything which is not the involuntary result of fleeting emotion but the creation of time and will, any marriage, happy or unhappy, is infinitely more interesting than any romance, however passionate.
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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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Of course, Behaviourism 'works'. So does torture. Give me a no-nonsense, down-to-earth behaviourist, a few drugs, and simple electrical appliances, and in six months I will have him reciting the Athanasian Creed in public.
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Happy the hare at morning, for she cannot read The hunter's waking thoughts.
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We who must die demand a miracle. How could the Eternal do a temporal act, The Infinite become a finite fact? Nothing can save us that is possible: We who must die demand a miracle.
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