Quotes

What if everything is an illusion and nothing exists? In that case, I definitely overpaid for my carpet. –Woody Allen

Mankind’s Tragedy

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Oct 042014
 

“He had discovered mankind’s tragedy: that it can draw the blueprint of goodness but it cannot live up to them.” – The Proud Tower “How small of all that human hearts endure That part which laws or kings can cause or cure!” – Samuel Johnson “No laws, however stringent, can make the idle industrious, the [more …]

 Posted by at 12:25 pm

Sing O Muse

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Jan 102010
 

And yet it just won’t go away:
I feel it and cannot understand it;
cannot hold on to it;
nor yet forget it;
and if I grasp it wholly
I cannot measure it!

–Richard Wagner

 Posted by at 1:31 pm

The Eye with which I see God

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Oct 052009
 

“The Eye with which I see God is the same Eye with which God sees me”

Meister Eckhart

 Posted by at 2:46 pm

The True Value of a Human Being

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Oct 052008
 

“The true value of a human being is determined primarily by the measure and the sense in which he has attained liberation from the self.” – Albert Einstein

This Attention

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Nov 042007
 

“Our search for the ultimate meaning of our lives is not a matter of a particular intelligence, or some special effort, or even exceptional means. Rather, finding the ultimate truth is like discovering something beautiful along one’s path. One sees and recognizes it, if one is attentive. The issue then, is this attention.”

Father Luigi Giussani

 Posted by at 7:38 pm

To Love at All is to be Vulnerable

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Nov 042007
 

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”

C.S. Lewis

 Posted by at 7:37 pm

The Starlight Sky

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Nov 042007
 

“The person formed by the Liturgy has absorbed in his flesh and blood the notion that he owes a suitable response to every value. He will rejoice in every exalted spectacle of nature, the beauty of the starlight sky, the majesty of the sea and mountains, the charm of life, the world of plants and [more …]

 Posted by at 7:31 pm

The Church

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Nov 042007
 

“Just as God’s will is creation and is called ‘the world’ so His intention is the salvation of men and is called ‘the church.’” Catechism 760

 Posted by at 7:28 pm

Commander of the Sea

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Nov 042007
 

Cnut set his throne by the sea shore and commanded the tide to halt and not wet his feet and robes. Yet “continuing to rise as usual [the tide] dashed over his feet and legs without respect to his royal person. Then the king leapt backwards, saying: ‘Let all men know how empty and worthless [more …]

 Posted by at 3:30 pm

We Love to Love

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Oct 052007
 

“We don’t love to be loved; we love to love” Unknown  

 Posted by at 7:33 am

Unbreakable

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Oct 052007
 

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one… Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket – safe, dark, motionless, airless – it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.”

C.S. Lewis

Hope in Action

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Oct 052007
 

“All serious and upright human conduct, is hope in action.”  Pope Benedict  

Reason’s Last Step

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Oct 052007
 

“Reason’s last step is the recognition that there are an infinite number of things which stand beyond it. It is merely feeble if it does not go so far as to realize that.” Blaise Pascal  

Empirical Success

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Oct 052007
 

“Empirical success is not a sufficient reason to assume that a theory is true – the same data permit different theories that explain them.” Unknown

 Posted by at 6:41 am

I Must Know Thee

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Oct 052007
 

I must know thee, Unknown One,
Thou who searchest out the debths of my soul,
And blowest like a storm through my life.
thou art inconceivable and yet my kinsman!
I must know thee and even serve thee.
[…]
Thus do I lie,
Bend myself, convulsed
With all eternal torture,
And smitten
By thee, cruelest huntsman,
Thou unfamiliar – GOD
Nietzsche

Even in the Desert

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Oct 052007
 

“Even in the deserts of the secularized world, the human soul thirsts for God.” Pope Benedict    

To Have Faith Means to Dare

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Oct 052007
 

“To have faith means to dare, to think the unthinkable, yet to act within the limits of the realistically possible; it is the paradoxical hope to expect the Messiah every day, yet not to lose heart when he has not come at the appointed hour.” Erich Fromm    

 Posted by at 6:28 am

Talkativeness

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Oct 052007
 

“When people’s attention is no longer turned inwards, when they are no longer satisfied with their own inner religious lives, but turn to others and to things outside themselves, where the relation is intellectual, in search of that satisfaction, when nothing important ever happens to gather the threads of life together with the finality of a catastrophe: then instead we get talkativeness.”

Soren Kierkegaard

Two Kinds of People

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Oct 052007
 

“There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says, “All right, then, have it your way.” C.S. Lewis    

The Fruit of Silence

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Oct 052007
 

“The fruit of SILENCE is Prayer The fruit of PRAYER is Faith The fruit of FAITH is Love The fruit of LOVE is Service The fruit of SERVICE is Peace” Mother Teresa’s Business Card    

Something Above Happiness

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Oct 052007
 

“To me, religion has brought at least the perception of something above morals, and therefore extremely terrifying; it has brought me not happiness, but the sense of something above happiness and therefore more terrifying than ordinary pain and misery; the very dark night and the desert. To me, the phrase “to be damned for the glory of God” is sense and not paradox; I had far rather walk, as I do, in daily terror of eternity, than feel that this was only a children’s game in which all the contestants would get equally worthless prizes in the end. … And I don’t know whether this is to be labeled “Classicism” or “Romanticism”; I only think that I have hold of the tip of the tail of something quite real, more real than morals, or than sweetness and light and culture.”

T.S. Eliot

Fear Not

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Oct 052007
 

“The young man had found Religion. He said to himself: fear not, trust in God, and your fears will not come true. The old man too had found Religion. He said to himself: fear not, trust in God, and though all your fears come true, know they are nothing to be afraid of.”

Unknown

 Posted by at 6:23 am

The Scholar

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Oct 052007
 

“Ever the winds blow; ever the grass grows. Every day, men and women, conversing, beholding and beholden. The scholar is he of all men whom this spectacle most engages.” Emerson

The Best Books

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Oct 052007
 

“It is remarkable, the character of the pleasure we derive from the best books. They impress us with the conviction, that one nature wrote and the same reads… There is some awe mixed with the joy of our surprise, when this poet, who lived in some past world, two or three hundred years ago, says that which lies close to my own soul, that which I also had wellnigh thought and said.”

Emerson

Wisdom, Honor, and Gain

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Oct 052007
 

In Book 9 of The Republic, Plato has Socrates divide humanity into three classes: “lovers of wisdom, lovers of honor, and lovers of gain.”    

Our American Colleges

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Oct 052007
 

“History and exact science he must learn by laborious reading. Colleges, in like manner, have their indispensable office, — to teach elements. But they can only highly serve us, when they aim not to drill, but to create; when they gather from far every ray of various genius to their hospitable halls, and, by the concentrated fires, set the hearts of their youth on flame. Thought and knowledge are natures in which apparatus and pretension avail nothing. Gowns, and pecuniary foundations, though of towns of gold, can never countervail the least sentence or syllable of wit. Forget this, and our American colleges will recede in their public importance, whilst they grow richer every year.”

Emerson