W. H. Auden ( 10 of 21 )
All theological language is necessarily analogical, but it was singularly unfortunate that the Church, in speaking of punishment for sin, read more
All theological language is necessarily analogical, but it was singularly unfortunate that the Church, in speaking of punishment for sin, should have chosen the analogy of criminal law, for the analogy is incompatible with the Christian belief in God as the creator of Man. Criminal laws are laws, imposed on men, who are already in existence, with or without their consent, and, with the possible exception of capital punishment for murder, there is no logical relation between the nature of a crime and the penalty inflicted for committing it. If God created man, then the laws of man's spiritual nature must, like the laws of his physical nature, be laws -- laws, that is to say, which he is free to defy but no more free to break than he can break the law of gravity by jumping out of the window, or the laws of biochemistry by getting drunk -- and the consequences of defying them must be as inevitable and as intrinsically related to their nature as a broken leg or a hangover. To state spiritual laws in the imperative -- Thou shalt love God with all thy being, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself -- is simply a pedagogical technique, as when a mother says to her small son, "Stay away from the window!" because the child does not yet know what will happen if he falls out of it.
Evil is unspectacular and always human, and shares our bed and eats at our own table.
Evil is unspectacular and always human, and shares our bed and eats at our own table.
When the Sex War ended with the slaughter of the Grandmothers, / They found a bachelor's baby suffocating under them; read more
When the Sex War ended with the slaughter of the Grandmothers, / They found a bachelor's baby suffocating under them; / Somebody called him George and that was the end of it: / They hitched him up to the Army.
What the mass media offers is not popular art, but entertainment which is intended to be consumed like food, forgotten, read more
What the mass media offers is not popular art, but entertainment which is intended to be consumed like food, forgotten, and replaced by a new dish.
The only way to spend New Year’s Eve is either quietly with friends or in a brothel. Otherwise when the read more
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.
A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us.
A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us.
We are here on earth to do good to others. What the others
are here for, I don't know.
We are here on earth to do good to others. What the others
are here for, I don't know.
The ear tends to be lazy, craves the familiar, and is shocked by the unexpected: the eye, on the other read more
The ear tends to be lazy, craves the familiar, and is shocked by the unexpected: the eye, on the other hand, tends to be impatient, craves the novel and is bored by repetition.
All sins tend to be addictive, and the terminal point of addiction is damnation.
All sins tend to be addictive, and the terminal point of addiction is damnation.
