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To pray is to pay attention to something or someone other than oneself.
W. H. Auden
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Interpretation

What this quote means

Praying involves focusing on entities outside of oneself, emphasizing selflessness.

W. H. Auden's quote highlights the essence of prayer as an act that shifts our attention away from our own concerns to something greater. It suggests that true prayer is not solely about asking for help or guidance, but rather an act of paying respect and consideration to the needs or existence of others, whether that be a divine entity or fellow beings.

Themes

PrayerAttentionSelflessnessConcernEmpathy

In practice

Example use cases

During a sermon, the pastor quoted Auden to emphasize the importance of community and selflessness in prayer.

More from W. H. Auden

Death is the sound of distant thunder at a picnic.
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That the speech of self-disclosure should be translatable seems to me very odd, but I am convinced that it is. The conclusion that I draw is that the only quality which all human being without exception possess is uniqueness: any characteristic, on the other hand, which one individual can be recognized as having in common with another, like red hair or the English language, implies the existence of other individual qualities which this classification excludes.
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Nobody knows what the cause is, though some pretend they do; it like some hidden assassin waiting to strike at you. Childless women get it, and men when they retire; it as if there had to be some outlet for their foiled creative fire.
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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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Music is the best means we have of digesting time.
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'Healing,' Papa would tell me, 'is not a science, but the intuitive art of wooing nature.'
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