W. H. Auden

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.

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.

He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, read more

He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

We are all here on earth to help others; what on earth the others are here for I don't know.

We are all here on earth to help others; what on earth the others are here for I don't know.

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.