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

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To ask the hard question is simple.
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The desires of the heart are as crooked as corkscrews Not to be born is the best for man The second best is a formal order The dance's pattern, dance while you can. Dance, dance, for the figure is easy The tune is catching and will not stop Dance till the stars come down from the rafters Dance, dance, dance till you drop.
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Life is a picnic on a precipice.
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The basic stimulus to the intelligence is doubt, a feeling that the meaning of an experience is not self-evident.
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The countenances of children, like those of animals, are masks, not faces, for they have not yet developed a significant profile of their own.
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Dance, dance, dance till you drop.
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How happy the lot of the mathematician. He is judged solely by his peers, and the standard is so high that no colleague or rival can ever win a reputation he does not deserve.
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There has been a vast output of critical studies in contemporary poetry, some of them first rate, but I do not think that , as a rule, a poet should read them.
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Few people take an interest in Iceland, but in those few the interest is passionate.
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One cannot review a bad book without showing off.
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God may reduce you on Judgment Day to tears of shame, reciting by heart the poems you would have written, had your life been good.
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But once in a while the odd thing happens Once in a while the dream comes true And the whole pattern of life is altered Once in a while, the moon turns blue
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And make us as Newton was, who in his garden watching The apple falling towards England, became aware Between himself and her of an eternal tie.
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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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Lost in a haunted wood, Children afraid of the night Who have never been happy or good.
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There must always be two kinds of art: escape-art, for man needs escape as he needs food and deep sleep, and parable-art, that art which shall teach man to unlearn hatred and learn love.
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Like love we don't know where or why Like love we cant compel or fly Like Love we often weep Like Love we seldom keep
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You know there are no secrets in America. It's quite different in England, where people think of a secret as a shared relation between two people.
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The primary function of poetry, as of all the arts, is to make us more aware of ourselves and the world around us. I do not know if such increased awareness makes us more moral or more efficient. I hope not. I think it makes us more human, and I am quite certain it makes us more difficult to deceive.
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Proper names are poetry in the raw. Like all poetry they are untranslatable.
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