W. H. Auden Quotes

I was born into an Irish Catholic family in the New York area in this great, wonderful, and safe country, but the Holocaust has always haunted me, and it has long stood as a stumbling block to faith. How could such a thing be? How is that consistent with the concept of a loving God?

Today I think that if for no other reason than that an Auschwitz existed, no one in our age should speak of Providence.

There is Auschwitz, and so there cannot be God.

I come from a very religious background.And actually I remained in it. All my anger I describe in my quarrels with God in Auschwitz, but you know I used to pray every day.

I built my church on Easter services, Christmas Eve services, and Norman Vincent Peale.

Somehow we just don't make the same boisterous fun of Holy Week that we do of Christmas. No one plans to have a holly, jolly Easter.

I was raised - and still consider myself to be - Catholic, though I'm non-practicing and haven't fulfilled my Easter duty since sometime during the Nixon years. I'm assailed by all kinds of stimulating doubts, but I do believe in God.

There would be no Christmas if there was no Easter.

How do you live with evil? Art is traditionally - certainly with my secular background - the answer, but art is very self-referential, whereas religion claims to go beyond the bounds of human existence.

Jesus is a half-naked guy, hanging, nailed to a cross, and then people wear that around their neck, and then those are the people that are upset about violence in movies.

When my son was murdered, people asked me how I felt about God and what had happened to my son. I said, 'No, you can't go there. You have to understand that there is a devil, and he works 24/7. Whoever murdered our son was with the devil.'

Belief in God hurts my people.

I was a Catholic boy, redeemed through pain, not through joy.

[Worshipping God] is like fellating someone who intermittently stubs fags out on your head for no good reason. And we all know how unsatisfying that can be.

And now brothers, I will ask you a terrible question, and God knows I ask it also of myself. Is the truth beyond all truths, beyond the stars, just this: that to live without him is the real death, that to die with him the only life?

Think of everything you've ever experienced that was painful; that's the meaning of Good Friday. Think of all the ways that love ultimately healed your heart; that's the meaning of Easter.

Suffering always prompts heart-wrenching questions: if God is good, why would He allow this pain in my life? Is God truly sovereign over accidents and birth anomalies, or does the devil set the world's agenda? How do I counsel people who are despairing of their condition?

... it was religion that saved me. Our ugly church and parochial school provided me with my only aesthetic outlet, in the words ofthe Mass and the litanies and the old Latin hymns, in the Easter lilies around the altar, rosaries, ornamented prayer books, votive lamps, holy cards stamped in gold and decorated with flower wreaths and a saint's picture.

A nominal Christian often discovers in suffering that his faith has been in his church, denomination, or family tradition, but not Christ. As he faces evil and suffering, he may lose his faith. But that’s actually a good thing. I have sympathy for people who lose their faith, but any faith lost in suffering wasn’t a faith worth keeping.

It was a miracle; it was all a miracle: and one ought to have known, from the sufferings of saints, that miracles are horror.

To have your niece die in your arms is the greatest gift from god.

For atheism and polytheism there is no special problem of suffering, nor need there be for every kind of monotheism.

Perhaps some day someone will explain how, on the level of man, Auschwitz was possible; but on the level of God, it will forever remain the most disturbing of mysteries.

How could I say to Him: Blessed be Thou, Almighty, Master of the Universe, who chose us among all nations to be tortured day and night, to watch as our fathers, our mothers, our brothers end up in furnaces? Praised be Thy Holy Name, for having chosen us to be slaughtered on Thine altar?

But perhaps God's purpose in the world (I am only thinking aloud here) is to draw his creatures to him. And you have to admit that tragedies like this one at Virginia Tech help to do that!