Quotes by W. H. Auden

May it not be that, just as we have to have faith in Him, God has to have faith in us and, considering the history of the human race so far, may it not be that ‘faith’ is even more difficult for Him than it is for us?

History is, strictly speaking, the study of questions the study of answers belongs to anthropology and sociology.

Health is the state about which medicine has nothing to say.

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.

Learn from your dreams what you lack.

Death is the sound of distant thunder at a picnic.

The words of a dead man are modified in the guts of the living.

All works of art are commissioned in the sense that no artist can create one by a simple act of will but must wait until what he believes to be a good idea for a work comes to him.

Art is our chief means of breaking bread with the dead.

Art is born of humiliation.