W. H. Auden Quotes

...the fall of man in paradise has always been followed by his expulsion.

Temptation has been here ever since the Garden of Eden.

Of Adam and Eve: They had what they wanted. That they did not like it when they got it does not alter the fact that they certainly got it.

Michael had once read to her how God had cast a man and woman out of paradise. Yet, for all their human faults and failures. God had shown them the way back in.

You first parents of the human race...who ruined yourself for an apple, what might you have done for a truffled turkey?

If I do not return to the pulpit this weekend, millions of people will go to hell.

Did perpetual happiness in the Garden of Eden maybe get so boring that eating the apple was justified?

Because of impatience we were driven out [of Paradise]; because of impatience we cannot return.

And as regards Adam and Eve we must maintain that before the fall they were virgins in Paradise: but after they sinned, and were cast out of Paradise, they were immediately married.

The saint endeavors to recover a gift which he has lost; the sinner tries to obtain something which was never his. In brief, he repeats the Fall.

From all of our beginnings, we keep reliving the Garden story.

A quick temper will make a fool of you soon enough.

Self is the root, the tree, and the branches of all the evils of our fallen state.

Behind the man is the Tree of Life, bearing twelve fruits, and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is behind the woman; the serpent is twining round it.

It all goes back, of course, to Adam and Eve - a story which shows among other things, that if you make a woman out of a man, you are bound to get into trouble.

God will not forgive us if we fail.

After a sound drubbing followed by half a day's fasting, I felt more like laughing than like crying; and, in half a while, all was forgotten and my wickedness began afresh and worse than ever.

Sin carries in it its own misery.

We are sinful not only because we have eaten of the Tree of Knowledge, but also because we have not yet eaten of the Tree of Life. The state in which we are is sinful, irrespective of guilt.

That is, the only reason salvation is necessary is to get us back to the garden. The Pentateuch not only presents where we began but also why we are not there any more, and why and how we need to get back.

Atheists have to live with the knowledge that there is no salvation, no redemption, no second chances. Lives can go terribly wrong in ways that can never be put right.

As it was in the beginning, Is today official sinning, And shall be forever more.

Whatever is begun in anger, ends in shame.

We're all sinners, every one of us. We've all done things we wish we hadn't.