W. H. Auden Quotes

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

• Sin
• Paradise
• Return

• Previous
• Next

Quotes to Explore

• I developed a mania for Fitzgerald - by the time I'd graduated from high school I'd read everything he'd written. I started with 'The Great Gatsby' and moved on to 'Tender Is the Night,' which just swept me away. Then I read 'This Side of Paradise,' his novel about Princeton - I literally slept with that book under my pillow for two years.

  

  A. Scott Berg
  • Time
  • Great
  • School

• Work with some men is as besetting a sin as idleness.

  

  Samuel Butler
  • Work
  • Men
  • Sin

• I was informed... that some... were dreaming and wished to return.

  

  Zebulon Pike
  • Return
  • Dreaming
  • Informed

• Surround yourself with people who provide you with support and love and remember to give back as much as you can in return.

  

  Karen Kain
  • People
  • Love
  • Remember

• I had the taste of the alcohol since I was 11. It allowed me to be clever, charming and to behave outrageously. Acting also allowed me not to be me. So I could indulge every fantasy in this paradise of America.

  

  Malachy McCourt
  • America
  • Clever
  • Alcohol

• He who builds a masjid in the way of Allah, God will build a house for him in the paradise.

  

  Abu Bakr
  • God
  • House
  • Paradise

• Soon after, I returned home to my family, with a determination to bring them as soon as possible to live in Kentucky, which I esteemed a second paradise, at the risk of my life and fortune.

  

  Daniel Boone
  • Life
  • Live
  • Family

• It's successful, middle-class Arab men and women, professionals with seemingly happy family lives, who are prepared to go to paradise for a greater cause. That's terrifying.

  

  Damian Lewis
  • Men
  • Women
  • Family

• To have prevented one single sin is reward enough for the labors and efforts of a whole lifetime.

  

  Saint Ignatius
  • Single
  • Sin
  • Reward

• An involuntary return to the point of departure is, without doubt, the most disturbing of all journeys.

  

  Iain Sinclair
  • Doubt
  • Without
  • Return

• We've gone too far in thinking we can re-create an American democratic paradise in the Middle East.

  

  Rand Paul
  • Thinking
  • American
  • Paradise

• Israel's days without Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria and the Gaza Strip are gone and will not return.

  

  Yitzhak Shamir
  • Israel
  • Return
  • Days

• The myths have always condemned those who 'looked back.' Condemned them, whatever the paradise may have been which they were leaving. Hence this shadow over each departure from your decision.

  

  Dag Hammarskjold
  • May
  • Decision
  • Leaving

• There is no question that what we are seeing - the horrible advance of ISIS - goes back, if you will, to the original sin of the invasion of Iraq.

  

  Valerie Plame
  • Question
  • Sin
  • Seeing

• I don't plan to return. I have a lot of unresolved things to do.

  

  Eduard Shevardnadze
  • Things
  • Plan
  • Return

• What is there in 'Paradise Lost' to elevate and astonish like Herschel or Somerville?

  

  Ralph Waldo Emerson
  • Lost
  • Paradise

• Those two, in paradise, were given a choice: happiness without freedom, or freedom without happiness. There was no third alternative.

  

  Yevgeny Zamyatin
  • Freedom
  • Paradise

• Love can consign us to hell or to paradise, but it always takes us somewhere.

  

  Paulo Coelho
  • Paradise

• I found out there is a production paradise in Brazil. I was able to make my second collection for less money but without sacrificing quality. More importantly, manufacturing in Brazil also fits in with my global initiative: to provide work and empowerment in a third-world country.

  

  Antonio Brown
  • World
  • Work
  • Country

• And she didn't once say anything about this being a sin. It used to be I got the word sin slapped in my face every time I did something wrong, but come on, when you live in a sin-free family with sin-free parents and a sin-free sister, well, you can't help but sin a little extra on their behalf.

  

  Han Nolan
  • Word
  • Sin
  • Behalf

• We are only just beginning to understand the power of love because we are just beginning to understand the weakness of force and aggression.

  

  B. F. Skinner
  • Power
  • Beginning
  • Force

• You can't just reprise the news. You have to have journalism that makes a point and you have to be in sync with your audience.

  

  Norman Pearlstine
  • Audience
  • Journalism
  • Reprise

• As long as leadership from above was not lacking, the people fulfilled their duty and obligation overwhelmingly. Whether Protestant pastor or Catholic priest, both together and particularly at the first flare, there really existed in both camps but a single holy German Reich, for whose existence and future each man turned to his own heaven.

  

  Adolf Hitler
  • Heaven
  • Leadership
  • Priest

• 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
  • Sin
  • Paradise
  • Return