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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.

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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Jórvík
Wystan Hugh Auden
Wystan Auden
Wystan H Auden
W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
Nothing
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Temporal
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A writer is a maker, not a man of action: his private life is of no concern to anybody but himself, his family and his friends.
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Those who will not reason, perish in the act. Those who will not act, perish for that reason.
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A small grove massacred to the last ash, An oak with heart-rot, give away the show: This great society is going to smash They cannot fool us with how fast they go, How much they cost each other and the gods. A culture is no better than its woods.
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The slogan of Hell: Eat or be eaten. The slogan of Heaven: Eat and be eaten.
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There are not many English novels which deserve to be called great: Parade's End is one of them.
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I'll love you till the ocean Is folded and hung up to dry And the seven stars go squawking Like geese about the sky.
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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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My face looks like a wedding-cake left out in the rain.
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Men will pay large sums to whores for telling them they are not bores.
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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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Now the leaves are falling fast, Nurse's flowers will not last Nurses to their graves are gone, And the prams go rolling on.
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God is Love, we are taught as children to believe. But when we first begin to get some inkling of how He loves us, we are repelled it seems so cold, indeed, not love at all as we understand the word.
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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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