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To have a sense of sin means to feel guilty at there being an ethical choice to make, a guilt which, however good I may become, remains unchanged.

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
Literary Historian
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Jórvík
Wystan Hugh Auden
Wystan Auden
Wystan H Auden
W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
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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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In headaches and in worry Vaguely life leaks away, And Time will have his fancy To-morrow or today.
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In times of joy, all of us wished we possessed a tail we could wag.
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History is, strictly speaking, the study of questions the study of answers belongs to anthropology and sociology.
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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.
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Let us honor if we can the vertical man, though we value none but the horizontal one
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History marched to the drums of a clear idea...
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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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A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us.
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The only way to spend New Year's Eve is either quietly with friends or in a brothel. Otherwise when the evening ends and people pair off, someone is bound to be left in tears.
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Get up very early and get going at once. In fact, work first and wash afterwards.
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You will be a poet because you will always be humiliated.
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The lights must never go out, The music must always play
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Say this city has ten million souls, Some are living in mansions, some are living in holes: Yet there’s no place for us, my dear, yet there’s no place for us.
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But he would have us most of all remember to be enthusiastic over the night. Not only for the sense of wonder it alone has to offer but also because it needs our love. For with sad eyes its delectable creatures look up and beg us dumbly to ask them to follow. They are exiles who long for a future that lies in our power.
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