W. H. Auden Quotes

For me science is not different from art, except in the one small, crucial detail that experiments speak their own truths, not ours.

Science is a line, art a superficies, and life or the knowledge of God, a solid.

The fundamental purpose of the artist is the same as that of a scientist: to state a fact.

Man is the interpreter of nature, science the right interpretation.

Every science begins as philosophy and ends as art; it arises in hypothesis and flows into achievement.

Poetry, mythology, and religion represent the world as man would like to have it, while science represents the world as he gradually comes to discover it.

The Oresteia, King Lear, Dostoevsky's 'The Devils' no less than the art of Giotto or the 'Passions' of Bach, inquire into, dramatize, the relations of man and woman to the existence of the gods or of God.

The object of science is knowledge; the objects of art are works. In art, truth is the means to an end; in science, it is the only end. Hence the practical arts are not to be classed among the sciences

Science is a way of talking about the universe in words that bind it to a common reality. Magic is a method of talking to the universe in words that it cannot ignore. The two are rarely compatible.

I read in a periodical the other day that the fundamental thing is how we think of God. By God Himself, it is not! How God thinks of us is not only more important, but infinitely more important.

Certainly it does make the greatest possible difference what we think about God; the knowledge of God is the very basis of religion.

For me, science is just a bunch of tools - it's like playing the violin.

There is no short cut to truth, no way to gain a knowledge of the universe except through the gateway of scientific method.

Science herself consults her heart when she lays it down that the infinite ascertainment of fact and correction of false belief are the supreme goods for man.

People for whom art is religion can say, "What I love about art is that it points to a higher reality." Well, fine, but the time comes when the smart thing for such a person to do is to let go of the fun of the art and get into the hard work of attaining and understanding that higher reality, unmixed with worldly games.

Religion and science have always been matters of faith in something. It is the same something.

Religions are such stuff as dreams are made of.

Art is the Godhead as revealed in the works of man.

Painting is saying "Ta" to God.

Christianity is art and not money. Money is its curse.

Music and religion are as intimately related as poetry and love; the deepest emotions require for their civilized expression the most emotional of arts.

Industry is best at the intersection of science and art.

Christianity in its ideas was never the art of the possible.

For this reason the gravest question before the Church is always God Himself, and the most portentous fact about any man is not what he at a given time may say or do, but what he is his deep heart conceives God to be like.

We shall do better to abandon the whole attempt to learn the truthunless we can trust to the human mind's having such a powerof guessing right that before very many hypotheses shall have been tried, intelligent guessing may be expected to lead us to one which will support all tests, leaving the vast majority of possible hypotheses unexamined.