"No freedom for the enemies of freedom!" (later guillotined at age 24, a victim of the process he initiated).

"To be boosted by an illusion is not to live better than to live in harmony with the truth; it is not nearly so safe, not nearly so sweet, and not nearly so fruitful. These refusals to part with a decayed illusion are really an infection to the mind. Believe, certainly; we cannot help believing; but believe rationally, holding what seems certain for certain, what seems desirable for desirable, and what seems false for false" (Smith 188).

�Those who commit these types of scandals are guilty of the spiritual equivalent of murder, But I'm here among you to prevent something far worse for you. While those who give scandal are guilty of the spiritual equivalent of murder, those who take scandal -- who allow scandals to destroy their faith -- are guilty of spiritual suicide.�

Lord, I am yours,
and I must belong to no one but you.
My soul is yours,
and must live only by you.
My will is yours,
and must love only for you.
I must love you as my first cause,
since I am from you.
I must love you as my end and rest,
since I am for you.
I must love you more than my own being,
since my being subsists by you.
I must love you more than myself,
since I am all yours and all in you.
AMEN (Treatise on the Love of God)

"there comes a time when one asks, even of Shakespeare, even of Beethoven, �Is that all there is?�"

"Hell is other people" (No Exit)

"there is no human nature, because there is no God to have a conception of it. Man simply is" (Existentialism is a Humanism).

"Tomorrow, after my death, certain people may decided to establish Fascism, and the others may be cowardly or miserable enough to let them get away with it. At that moment, Fascism will be the truth of man" (in McGrath 192).

"[Dostoevsky�s statement that if there is no God, all is permitted] That is the very starting point of existentialism. Indeed everything is possible if God does not exist, and as a result man is forlorn, because neither within him nor without does he find anything to cling to" (Existentialism is a Humanism).

�The only business of the Christian, in the end, is to be crucified.�

�whole truth is always walking a razor-edge of delicate balance between the lopsided exaggerations.�

�the cultivation of religious feelings without intellectual foundations is perfectly precocious.�

Hell is chewing on one another. Frustration of the damned consists in having nothing good to chew at.

"God himself . . . is doing something about it [the pattern of evil in the world] � with our cooperation, if we choose, in despite of us if we refuse to cooperate � but always, steadily, working the pattern out. . . . We find God continually at work turning evil into good. Not, as a rule by irrelevant miracles and theatrically effective judgments . . . But he takes our sins and errors and turns them into victories, as he made the crime of the Crucifixion to be the salvation of the world" (Sayers 14-15).

"[Sloth, or "tolerance"] is the sin which believes in nothing, cares for nothing, seeks to know nothing, interferes with nothing, enjoys nothing, hates nothing, finds purpose in nothing, and only remains alive because there is nothing it would die for" (Sayers 108).

"here Christianity has its enormous advantage over every other religion in the world. In is the only religion which gives value to evil and suffering. If affirms�not like Christian Science, that evil has no real existence, nor like Buddhism, that good consists in a refusal to experience evil�but that perfection is attained through the active and positive effort to wrench a real good out of a real evil" (CoC 44).

"In contending with the problem of evil it is useless to try to escape either from the bad past or into the good past. The only way to deal with the past is to accept the whole past, and by accepting it, to change its meaning" (Creed or Chaos?, 60).

* "�Christianity has compelled the mind of man, not because it is the most cheering view of human existence, but because it is the truest to the facts� [Lord David Cecil].

I think this is true; and it seems to me quite disastrous that the idea should have gotten out that Christianity is an otherwordly, unreal, idealistic kind of religion which suggests that if we are good we shall be happy�or if not, it will all be made up to us in the next existence. On the contrary, it is fiercely and even harshly realistic, insisting that the Kingdom of Heaven can never be attained in this world except by unceasing toil and struggle and vigilance: that, in fact, we cannot be good and cannot be happy, but that there are certain eternal achievements that make even happiness look like trash. It has been said, I think by Berdyaev, that nothing can prevent the human soul from preferring creativeness to happiness. In this lies man�s substantial likeness to the Divine Christ who in this world suffers and creates continually" (DS CoC 47).

"One of the really surprising things about the present bewilderment of humanity is that the Christian Church now finds herself called upon to proclaim the old and hated doctrine of sin as a gospel of cheer and encouragement. The final tendency of the modern philosophies, which were hailed in their day as a release from the burden of sinfulness, has been to bind man hard and fast in the chains of an iron determinism. The influences of heredity and environment, of glandular make-up and the control exercised by the unconscious, of economic necessity and the mechanics of biological development, have all been invoked to assure man that he is not responsible for his misfortunes and therefore not to be held guilty. Evil has been represented as something imposed upon him from without, not made by him from within. The dreadful conclusion follows inevitably, that as he is not responsible for evil, he cannot alter it" (CoC 48).

"this commonly happens in periods of disillusionment like our own, when philosophies are bankrupt and life appears without hope�me and women may turn in sheer boredom and discontent, trying to find in it some stimulus which is not provided by the drab discomfort of their mental and physical surroundings. . . . The mournful and medical aspect of twentieth-century pornography and promiscuity strongly suggests that we have reached one of those periods of spiritual depression, where people go to bed because they have nothing better to do" (Sayers 87).

"The heart of neo-orthodox existential theology is that the Bible gives us a quarry out of which to have religious experience, but that the Bible makes mistakes where it touches what is verifiable�namely, history and science" (Complete Works, Vol2, p.121).

"For each of us as Christians, the important thing is that there are some people, whether great or small, who can be thankful that we have lived and that God has worked through us" (Complete Works, Vol3, p.106).

"Man�s thinking can only be satisfied within a framework that answers two questions: what is the meaning of man, and why is he in the dilemma he is in?" (Complete Works, Vol3, p.153).

"As Jesus stood [at Lazarus� tomb], He not only wept, but he was angry. The exegesis of the passages John 11:33 and 38 is clear. Jesus, standing in front of the tomb of Lazarus, was angry at death and at the abnormality of the world�the destruction and distress caused by sin. . . . Christ hated the plague. He claimed to be God, and He could hate the plague without hating himself as God" (Schaeffer 117).

"No matter what a man may believe, he cannot change the reality of what is. As Christianity is the truth of what is there, to deny this, on the basis of another system, is to stray from the real world. . . . Christian apologetics do not start somewhere beyond the stars. They begin with man and what he knows about himself. . . . Every person is somewhere along the line between the real world and the logical conclusion of his or her non-Christian presuppositions. Every person has the pull of these two consistencies, the pull towards the real world and the pull towards the logic of his system. He may let the pendulum swing back and forth between them, but he cannot live in both places at once. . . . The individual will feel this tension in different ways�with some it will be beauty, with some it will be significance, with some it will be rationality, with some it will be the fear on non-being. . . . [T]here is common ground between the Christian and the non-Christian because regardless of a man�s system, he has to live in God�s world" (Schaeffer Trilogy 132, 133, 135, 138).

"Because of our faith in Him and our desire to be God-like, we are not so much saved all at once as slowly changed into the creatures we were created to be" (Dancing Alone 207).

"Each successive epoch of theology found its own thoughts in Jesus; that was, indeed, the only way in which it could make him live. But it was not only each epoch that found its reflection in Jesus; each individual created Him in accordance with his own character. There is no historical task which so reveals a man�s true self as the writing of a Life of Jesus" (Quest for the Historical Jesus, 3rd ed, London: A&C Black, 1954, p.4 quoted in McGrath 30).

"Death lies heavily on him who, while too well known to everyone else, dies unknown to himself" (Thyestes).

"There is as much greatness of mind in acknowledging a good turn, as in doing it."

"When you aren�t what you were, there�s no reason to live."

"He that does good to another does good also to himself, not only in the consequence but in the very act. For the consciousness of well-being is in itself ample reward."

"Most powerful is he who has himself in his power."

"better not to have been born at all, but if born, better to die at once."

"Philosophy is not a subject for idle moments. We must neglect everything else and concentrate on this, for no time is long enough for it. Put it aside for a moment, and you might as well give it up, for once interrupted, it will not remain. We must resist all other occupations, not merely dispose of them but reject them" (in Abelard 72).

"Our motto, as we all know, is to live according to nature. It is against nature for a man to torment his body, to hate simple cleanliness and seek out dirt, to eat food which is not only cheap but disgusting and revolting. Just as a craving for dainties is a token of extravagance, avoidance of what is familiar and cheaply prepared is madness. Philosophy calls for simple living, not a penance, and a simple way of life need not be a rough one. This is the standard I approve" (in Abelard 244).

"Natural desires are limited, but hose which spring from false opinion can have no stopping point" (Moral Epistles XVI).

"The only use for a past is to get a future out of it."

"To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life�s but a walking shadow; a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing" (Macbeth, V.v. ).

"The best reformers the world has ever seen are those who commence on themselves."

"I am ready to admit after contemplating the world and human nature for sixty years that I see no way out of the world�s misery but by the way which would be found by Christ�s will."

"The golden rule is that there is no golden rule" (in Chesterton Heresies).

"There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it."

"There is two tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart�s desire. The other is to get it."

�Better keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window through which you must see the world.�

�The secret of being miserable is to have leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not.�

�Life is a flame that is always burning itself out, but it catches fire again and again every time a child is born.�

"Sin is not the worst thing in the world. The worst thing in the world is the denial of sin" ("Why I am a Catholic" in Delaney 181).

�The principle reason for sex deification is loss of the belief in God�.There is no surer formula for discontent than to try to satisfy our craving for Infinite Love from the teacup of finite satisfactions� (Fulton Sheen, Peace of Soul, p.153).

�The animal can satisfy all its desires below; man connot do this, and his tenstion comes from trying to substitute the chaff of sex for the bread of life� (p.158).

"Scripture is indeed the Word of God, but it can be interpreted in a thousand different ways, as the multiplicity of sects within Christianity proves. Without tradition and the magisterium of the Church with would not be able to determine the real meaning which Scripture ought to have" ("Why I am a Catholic" in Delaney 181).

"If the study to which you apply yourself has a tendency to weaken your affections and destroy your taste for those simple pleasures in which no alloy can possibly mix, then that study is certainly unlawful, that is to say, not benefiting the human mind. If this rule were always observed; if no man allowed any pursuit whatsoever to interfere with the tranquillity of his domestic affections, Greece had not been enslaved, Caesar would have spared his country, America would have been discovered more gradually, and the empires of Mexico and Peru had not been destroyed" (Frankenstein 40).

"She [Elizabeth] was no longer that happy creature who in earlier youth wandered with me on the banks of the lake and talked with ecstasy of our future prospects. The first of those sorrows which are sent to wean us from the earth had visited her, and its dimming influence quenched her dearest smiles" (Frankenstein 76).

"It [my first sight of the glacier] had then filled me with a sublime ecstasy that gave wings to the soul and allowed it to soar from the obscure world to light and joy. The sight of the awful and majestic in nature had indeed always the effect of solemnizing my mind and causing me to forget the passing cares of life" (Frankenstein 81).

"How dare you sport thus with life? . . . Life, although it may only be an accumulation of anguish, is dear to me, and I will defend it" (Frankenstein 83).

"My father, who was watching over me, perceiving my restlessness, awoke me; the dashing waves were around, the cloudy sky above, the fiend was not here: a sense of security, a feeling that a truce was established between the present hour and the irresistable, disastrous future imparted to me a kind of calm forgetfulness, of which the human mind is by its structure peculiarly susceptible" (Frankenstein 168).

"When younger...I believed myself destined for some great enterprise...This sentiment of the worth of my nature supported me when other would have been oppressed, for I considered it criminal to throw away in useless grief the those talents that might be useful to my fellow creatures. When I reflected on the work I had completed, . . . I could not rank myself with the herd of common projectors. But this thought, which supported me in the commencement of my career, now serves only to plunge me lower in the dust. All my speculations and hope are as nothing, and like the archangel who aspired to omnipotence, I am chained in an eternal hell. . . . I trod heaven in my thoughts, now exulting in my powers, now burning with the idea of their effects....but how am I sunk" (Frankenstein 194).

"And wherefore was it [the voyage the men now want to forsake] glorious? Not because the way was smooth and placid as a southern sea, but because it was full of dangers and terror, because at every new incident your fortitude was to be called forth and your courage exhibited, because danger and death surround it, and these you were to be brave and overcome. For this it was a glorious, for this it was an honorable undertaking...Oh! Be men, or be more than men. Be steady to your purposes and firm as a rock. This ice is not made of such stuff as your hearts may be; it is mutable and cannot with stand you if you say that it shall not...Return as heroes who have fought and conquered and who know not what it is to turn their backs on the foe" (Frankenstein 197-198).

"Seek happiness in tranquility and avoid ambition, even if it be only the apparently innocent one of distinguishing yourself in science and discoveries. Yet why do I say this? I have been blasted in these hopes, yet another may succeed" (Frankenstein 200).

"In his [Frankenstein's] murder my crimes are consummated; the miserable series of my being is wound to its close. Oh, Frankenstein! Generous and self-devoted being! What does it avail that I now ask thee to pardon me? I, who irrevocably destroyed thee by destroying all thou lovedst. Alas! He is cold, he cannot answer me" (Frankenstein 201).

"The living water [passes] through you as a channel, because it did not find in you a cistern worthy to attain it" (about the Eucharist).

"The liturgy is a drama through which we contemplate, and thus are brought into an inner state through which we may participate in and experience, the whole mystery of Christ�s salvific mission towards us. . . . Ecclesial liturgy and cosmic liturgy reciprocate one another and are interdependent. . . . [I]f the liturgy is to support and energize our inner moment of detachment from things worldly, its music, its language, the priestly vestments, and the whole iconographic setting of the church must contribute. The singing, for instance, should reflect a transcendence of worldly time and not represent a taste, an epoch, a type of personality or any kind of subjective psychic or sentimental emotion (which is one of the reasons it should never be performed in a non-liturgical setting or on a concert platform, for this removes it from the sacred context of worship and glorification in which alone its meaning is manifest. It is the same with the iconography, which includes not only the icons proper, but also such profound symbolic images as candles. The presence in the church of non-iconic �naturalistic� or romantically idealized representations of saints and other holy or celestial personages introduces a distortion that cannot but deflect the rhythm of the liturgy. . . .Replace candles by electric light and all the significance of the candle is nullified . . . their flames, flickering like the spirit that lives in peril, no longer repel the shadows" (Divine Ascent 29-30).

"To man qua man we readily say good riddance."

"Survival is the only value according to which a culture is eventually to be judged, and any practice which furthers survival has survival value by definition" (in Schaeffer Vol5, p.230).

"Pantheism�the identification of �god� with nature�is a well-known instance of naturalistic theism. But the pantheist (or any alleged theist who wishes to describe his god solely in naturalistic terms) is open to the charge of reducing his god to triviality. If god is taken to be synonymous with nature or some aspect of the natural universe, we may then ask why the term �god� is used at all. it is superfluous and highly misleading. The label of �god� serves no function (except, perhaps, to create confusion), and one must suspect that the naturalistic theist is simply an atheist who would rather avoid this designation" (Atheism: The Case Against God, p.32, Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1979.)

"I want Thy plan, O God, for my life. May I be happy and contented whether in the homeland or on he foreign field; whether married or alone, in happiness or sorrow, health or sickness, prosperity or adversity--I want Thy plan, O God, for my plan. I want it; oh, I want it."

"In the New Testament, religion is grace and ethics is gratitude" (114).

"Submission is not the same as obedience or doing someone else�s will, and it certainly is not weakness. Submission by Christians means the voluntary surrender of one�s rights or will in response to the purposes and actions of God" (87).

"Every statement�even our most valued theological ones�requires qualification and explanation and is open to abuse" (184-84).

"Sin is the refusal to be human. . . . We must discover the limits of our humanity; when we do so, we discover that tension is inherent in our nature. Humans are made only a little lower than God (Ps. 8:5), but they are also like the beasts that perish (Ps. 49:12). Humans are temporal, but capable of unending relation with God. We are weak, but strong; have limited knowledge, but powerful and creative minds; are subjected to suffering, death, sin, and the actions of others, but are also capable of healing and are free and responsible. Humans are victims of sin and temptation, but recipients of redemption and can live godly lives. Being human means that we have a variety of physical needs and drives: space, food, shelter, sex, and pleasure. It also means that we have less tangible, but no less real, needs and drives as well: recognition, meaning, productivity, relationships with other humans, and a relationship with God. None of us can live authentically while attempting to deny these facts" (189).

"The unexamined life is not worth living"

�If all our misfortunes were laid in one common heap, whence everyone must take an equal portion, most people would be content to take their own and depart.�

�The two great historic experiments, that of the Middle Ages and that of modern times, seem to demonstrate conclusively that neither the Church lacking the assistance of a secular power which is distinct from but responsible to her, nor the secular State relying upon its own resources, can succeed in establishing Christian justice and peace on the earth. The close alliance and organiz union of the two powers without confusion and without division is the indispensable condition of true social progress� (31).

�The profoundly religious and monarchic instinct of the Russian people, certain prophetic events in its past history, the enromous and compact bulk of its Empire, the great latent stregnth of the national spirit in contrast to the poverty and emptiness of its actual existence�all this seems to indicate that is its the historic destiny of Russia to provide the Universal Church with the political power which it requires for the salvation and regeneration of Europe and of the world� (31).

�In the city of God, there is no enemy or foreigner, no slave or preletaian, no criminal or convict. The foreigner is simple a brother from a far country; the proletarian is an unfortunate bother who needs succour; the criminal is a fallen brother who must be helped up� (Solovyov 13).

"One word of truth outweighs the world."

�It was only when I lay there on rotting prison straw that I sensed within myself the first stirrings of good. Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not between states or classes or political parties either but right through every human heart and through all human hearts� (Solzhenitsyn Gulag Archipelago Vol 2, p.615).

"Not to be born is, past all prizing, best"

"We are all, I acknowledge, pilgrims, but not vagrants: our life is uncertain, but not our road."

"[Berdyaev] asserts that he accepted Christianity because he found in it a much more firm ground for his faith in man�s supreme destiny than anywhere else. . . . [H]istory has meaning because it tends towards a God-appointed goal. Berdyaev thus not only rejects Nietzsche�s notion of the �eternal recurrence,� but even more vehemently repudiates the secularist concept of automatic and inevitable �progress.� No such mechanical concept can have authentic meaning, because it lacks true teleology�an end toward which it aims. Such �progress� is not going anywhere; therefore, it is essentially meaningless. Men cannot determine the cosmic goal, since they are themselves the product of, and determined by, the cosmic forces. For all mechanical forces as conceived by the natural sciences are determined by natural laws and therefore purposeless. Only God can purpose an end and thus impart meaning to history; for this end will be the triumph of menaing. Thus the meaningfulness of history is possible only to those who believe in God and His purpose for the world. . . . [N]o true progress is possible on the purely mechanistic assumptions of the scientific point of view. For unless the evolutionary process has a goal toward which it can tend, one cannot talk of progress. For natural forces are blind and lacking in purpose, and man is unable to set up a cosmic goal, since he himself is the creature of the cosmic forces. No impersonal force, no natural law, no mechanical process, can act purposefully. Only God can set a goal for human history and for the cosmic purposes. Accordingly, the belief in progress�that is, in a goal and a meaning for human life as well as for the cosmos�is possible and reasonable only for those who believe in God. If God does not exist, then there is no meaning in the cosmos, and hence in human life. Inly God is great enough and powerful enough to set a goal for human history and for the cosmic evolution, and to direct its progress toward that goal " (219, 223, 230).

"We are not sinners because we sin; we sin because we are sinners"

Sproul: "[C]hance is thought of as some sort of nonpurposeful entity which accounts for the existence of what is called purposeful. . . . It is tacitly assumed that a purposeful event needs some sort of explanation. The obvious candidate is, of course, a purposing cause back of the event. But for advocates of chance this is what must be avoided. So they propose a nonpurposing cause back of the purposeful event. Without purposing to do so, the nonpurposive produces the purposive. On the surface of it, that is an absurd statement. . . . Presumably, if a purposeful event is produced, someone or something has a purpose in producing it. But it would not be traceable to chance because chance never purposes anything. If it did, it would not be chance. . . . Chance does not explain a purposeful event. It could not even explain a chance event. For if we said that chance explained a chance event, then it would not be chance but it would be some deliberate (therefore, purposeful) producing of a so-called chance event" (Sproul 133).

"�I will do as much as I can,� says one. Any fool can do that. He that believes in Christ does what he can not do, attempts the impossible and performs it" (Matthew 29:18, 20).

"No one is more free from all that is artificial than the saint, further from any kind of boasting, more �natural� in his behavior, because he accepts and understands everything that is truly human, all those lowly and sometimes ridiculous aspects of our humanity, which is great only when it is not boasting of its greatness. The saint immediately creates an atmosphere of friendliness, of kinship, and indeed of intimacy between himself and others" (Prayer and Holiness).

�A person who seeks truth, knowingly or unknowingly, seeks God.�

"There ain't no sin and there ain't no virtue. There's just stuff people do. It's all part of the same thing. And some of the things folks do is nice, and some ain't nice, but that's as far as any man got a right to say...Maybe all men got one big soul ever'body's a part of...I knew it so deep down that it was true and I still know it" (Grapes of Wrath 24-25).

"Men ate what they had not raised, had no connection with the bread. The land bore under iron, and under iron gradually died; for it was not loved or hated, it had no prayers or curses" (Grapes of Wrath 38).

"If [a man] needs a million acres to make him feel rich, seems to me he needs it 'cause he feels awful poor inside hisself and is he's poor inside hisself there ain't no million acres gonna make him feel rich" (Grapes of Wrath 227).

"Sure I got sins. Ever'body got sins. A sin is somepin you ain't sure about. Them people that's sure about ever'thing...ain't got no sin...I know this- a man got to do what he got to do...I don't think they's luck or bad luck. On'y one thing in this world I'm sure of, and that's I'm sure nobody got a right to mess with a fella's life. He's got to do it all hisself. Help him maybe, but not tell him what to do...A fella builds his own sins right up from the ground" (Grapes of Wrath 247).

"And the hunger was gone from them, the feral hunger, the grawing, tearing hunger for land, for water and earth and the good sky over it, for the green thursting grass, for the swelling roots...They arose in the dark no more to hear the sleepy birds' first chittering, and the morning wind around the house while they waited for the firt light to go out to the dear acres. These things were lost, and crops were reckoned in dollars...Then crop failure, drought, and flood were no longer little deaths within life, but simple losses of money. And all their love was thinned with money, and all their fierceness dribbled away in interest until they were no longer farmers at all..." (Grapes of Wrath 254-255).

"...in the eyes of the people there is a growing failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage" (Grapes of Wrath 385).

"I don't like it. I wanta go out like Al. An' I wanta get mad like Pa, an' I wanta get drunk like Uncle John� [Tom] . . . �You can't. They's some folks that's just theirself an' nothing more...Ever'thing you do is mor'n you" [Ma] (Grapes of Wrath 389).

"Is there anything in life so disenchanting as attainment?"

"To journey hopefully is better than to arrive."

"Man is a creature who lives not upon bread alone, but principally by catchwords" (Robert Louis Stevenson).

"The saints are sinners who keep trying."

�Friendships are discovered rather than made.�

"Young man, seekest thou great things for thyself? Seek them not! Seek ye first the kingdom of God."

"If Jesus Christ be God and died for me, then no sacrifice is too great for me to give to Him."

To be a saint is "to live in such a way that one�s life would not make sense if God did not exist."

"We have to use our time here on earth to improve spiritually . . . Art must serve this purpose . . . I don�t believe in the possibility of education . . . The more we learn, the less we know. . . The purpose of art is to help man improve himself spiritually" (Tarkovsky).

"man . . . contains a universe within himself, and so in order to find expressions for the idea of the meaning of human life, there is no need for a backdrop crowded with happenings" (Tarkovsky).

"What is truthful is seldom easy to understand . . . It�s always a unique experience that cannot be taken apart, or finally, explained" (Tarkovsky).

"I don�t think about reality. I try to perceive it. I relate to reality more like an animal, like a child, than a mature adult who can think and draw conclusions" (Tarkovsky).

�Suffering is not optional, but misery is�

"God's work done in God's way will not lack God's supply."

"What we give up for Christ we gain. What we keep back for ourselves is our real loss."

"the aim of a Christian social order is the fullest possible development of the individual in the widest and deepest possible fellowship, because the principle of morality is that we should behave as persons who are members of a society of persons." William Temple

"Marxism is a Christian heresy."

"Christianity is the most materialistic of all great religions."

"Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers" (Locksley Hall 1.143).

"There lies more faith in honest doubt,

Believe me, than in half the creeds" (Tennyson).

"To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield"

"Nothing has yet been said that�s not been said before" (Terence, d. 159 BC).

"There are as many opinions as there are people: each has his own correct way" (Terence, d. 159 BC).

"Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless."

(from Story of a Soul)

�all the flowers he has made are beautiful; the rose in its glory, the lily in its whiteness, don�t rob the tiny violet of its sweet smell, or the daisy of its charming simplicity. I saw that if the lessor blooms wanted to be roses instead, nature would lose the gaiety of her springtide dress. . . And so it is with the world of souls, which is his garden. He wanted to have great Saints, to be his lilies and roses, but he has made lesser Saints as well; and these lesser ones must be content to rank as daises and violets, lying at his feet and giving pleasure to his eye like that. Perfection consists simply in doing his will, and being just what he wants us to be. . . . he has made the poor savages, with nothing better than the natural law to live by; and he is content to forget his dignity and come into their hearts too�these are the wild flowers that delight him by their simplicity. It it by such condescension that God shows his infinite greatness� (26).

�The sun�s light, that plays on the cedar trees, plays on each tiny flower as if it were the only one in existence; and in the same way our Lord takes a special interest in each soul, as if there were no other like it. Everything conspires for the good of each individual soul, just as the march of the seasons is designed to make the most insignificant daisy unfold its petals on the say appointed for it� (26-27).

�the whole point of love is making yourself small� (26).

�There were plenty of degrees in spiritual advancement, and every soul was free to answer our Lord�s invitation by doing a little for him, or by doing a lot for him; in fact, he gave it a choice between various kinds of self-sacrifice he wanted it to offer� (39).

�Noises came to me from a distance, the sighing of the wind, and faint echoes even, of music from soldiers on the march, inducing a mood of agreeable melancholy. Earth seemed a place of exile, and I could dream of heaven. . . . no this world was a depressing place, and there was to be no unclouded happiness this side of heaven� (46).

�[Feeling the approach of the week on Sunday evenings] gave me the sense of being in exile, longing for the eternal rest of heaven, those endless sabbaths in our true home� (51).

�The only true glory . . . is the glory that lasts for ever; and to win that, you don�t need to perform any dazzling exploits�you want to live a hidden life, doing good in such an unobtrusive way that you don�t even let your left hand know what your right hand is doing� (75).

�nothing is worth while except loving God with your whole heart and being poor in spirit as long as this life lasts� (77).

�when all the joys of heaven come flooding into a human heart; how difficult it is for that heart, still in exile, to stand the stain of the impact without finding relief in tears� (83).

�I shall always be grateful to our Lord for turning earthly friendships into bitterness for me, because, with a nature like mine, I could so easily have fallen into a snare and had my wings clipped; and then how should I have been able to �flu away and find rest?�� (89).

�It was only God�s mercy that preserved me from giving myself up to the love of creatures; without that, I might have fallen as low as St. Mary Magdalen did. . . . �He loves little, who has little forgiven him.� But I, you say, owed him little? On the contrary, I owe him more than the Magdalen herself; he remitted my sins beforehand, as it were, by not letting me fall into them. . . . In my case, he has left me indebt to him not for much but for everything. He hasn�t waited to make me love him much, I like the Magdalen; he�s made me love him to distraction, as I do� (90).

�Once your soul has been raised up, even in a small degree, above the common level, you see bitterness in all the pleasures the world has to ffer, and the longings of your heart are too large to be contented with ephemeral praise [compliments, fame, etc.]� (93).

�Talking to God, I felt, is always better than talking about God; those pious conversations�there�s always a touch of self-approval about them� (94).

�That God should have seen fit to squander such masterpieces on a world of exile, an ephemeral world like this!� (125).

�there was no opportunity of taking a solitary walk among the ruins, and meditating on the uncertainty of our human lot: too many tourists about, so that the melancholy effect of the ruined city was spoilt� (138).

�Was it presumptuous of me? Well, God sees into the depth of our hearts, and he knew that my intentions were good, that I�d have done anything rather than offend him. I claimed the privileges of a child, that doesn�t bother about asking leave, but treats all its father�s treasures as if they were its own� (141).

Lionel Terray

(from Conquistadors of the Useless)

�[Mountaineering] is one the few doors the modern world has left open on adventure, one of the last ways out of the armor-plating of humdrumness in which civilization imprisons us, and for which we are not all very well adapted� (Conquistadors 66).

�In that rapturous peace, I felt that somehow, henceforward, nothing would count for me beyond this world of grandeur and purity where every corner held a promise of enchanted hours� (33).

Guido Lammer: �a passionate involvement in the act of mountaineering, and the constant menace of danger disturbing the very depths of our being, are the source of powerful moral or religious emotions which may be of the greatest spirituality� (in Terray Conquistadors 34).

�If, in order to forget the emptiness of their existence, many people become drunk and speak of their place, their mission, their social utility, how meaningless and conventional their words really are! In our disorganizaed and meaningless world, how many people can honestly say they are useful today?� (38).

�But mountaineers are far from being angels, even if they do frequent a world of light and beauty. They remain men whose hearts are soiled by the world from which they come and to which they must return� (152).

�Perhaps it is one of the major virtues of climbing that it gives back their true value to simple actions like eating and drinking� (178).

�A life was to be saved against all reason by the generous impulses which still survive in the hearts of men in this age of steel� (190).

�It [friendship] is a powerful emotion, like love, which had to be cultivated; and in the same way it becomes devitalized if given too often or too easily� (199).

�The [guide] lives in an environment of majesty and splendor where the pettiness and malice of society have no meaning, and it rare to find one who has failed to absorbed something of the largeness of his surroundings� (202).

�The Church is from the apostles, the apostles from Christ, Christ from God� (Tertullian).

"We are not to dispute with heretics, because we should rather stand on the faith of the ancients, than dispute over the Scriptures" (Eck 183).

"And the Son of God died; it is by all means to be believed, because it is absurd. And he was buried and rose again; the fact is certain because it is impossible."

"What has Jerusalem to do with Athens? the Academy with the Church?" (De praescriptione haereticorum 7).

"The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church"

"How can I ever express the happiness of the marriage that is joined together by the church, strengthened by an offering, sealed by a blessing, announced by angels and ratified by the Father? !!! How wonderful the bond between two believers, with a single hope, a single desire, a single observance, a single service! They are both brethren and both fellow servants; there is no separation between them in spirit or flesh. In fact they are truly two in one flesh, and where the flesh is one, one is the spirit." (Familiarus Consortio).

"Would that we had spent one whole day well in this world!"

�Jesus, sweet to the taste beyond all our telling, turn all earthly consolations into bitterness for me� (III.xxvi.3).

�Love never pleads inability; to love, everything seems possible and everything seems allowable� (III.v.4).

"Every action of yours, every thought, should be those of one who expects to die before the day is out. Death would have no great terrors for you if you had a quiet conscience . . . If you aren�t fit to face death today, it�s very unlikely you will be tomorrow" (CCC 1014).

"Sic transit gloria mundi."

"The world is a looking glass and gives back to every man the reflection of his own face. Frown at it, and it will in turn look sourly upon you; laugh at it, and with it, and it is a jolly kind companion."

"The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready."

"The mass of men live lives of quiet desperation."

"There are now-a-days professors of philosophy but not philosophers."

"Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison."

"There is never an instant�s truce between virtue and vice."

"Our life is frittered away by detail. . . . Simplify, simplify."

"[It is only when man despairs of being able to complete his own tower of Babel that] he has his hands free for joining the work of building all the smaller towers of the earthly city, which is dear to him in its transitory nature, in its relativity and limitations, because it points to the entirely different heavenly city for which he is waiting. He no longer seeks to make the titanic stride of educating man into a superman, or even into a noble person; therefore he may and can rejoice in the many thousand steps that must be made on earth in the present" (Harvey 133-134).

"Anyone who is obliged to admit that it is all meaningless and purposeless loses the courage to act and sinks into paralyzing resignation" (Creed 17).

"Of course, once there was someone who wanted to help him out of ambiguity. He offered him glory and power and the wealth of this world. He wanted Jesus to leap from the temple in order to put on an immense propaganda campaign with him (Matt. 4:1 ff.). Then there would no longer have been any ambiguity, and everyone would have shown him due reverence. But the one who wanted it that way was, unfortunately, the devil; and Jesus declined the offer. He wanted to remain ambiguous. He wanted to stay in the picture-puzzle so that we would have to search for him with all our powers of mind and heart fully engaged and fully committed. He didn�t want to be cheaply bought when he himself paid the highest price" (Creed 66).

[On mythological view of Jesus] "The oldest accounts of him (Paul�s report of the Resurrection, for example) were written barely a quarter-century after his death, and a respectable number of witnesses who had been Jesus� companions were still alive. Myths don�t develop in such a short span of time. At best, the memory of a dead hero is adorned with a few legends and transforming anecdotes. The creator of a myth chooses the dim, distant past, beyond the reach of memory. In 1968 he doesn�t invent a divine being who, he maintains, lived in New York and died on Lexington Avenue in 1940. Of all the theories about Jesus which have been propounded, this mythological explanation is by far the least likely. . . . The man of antiquity could certainly participate in the cult of the resurrected Dionysius without compromising himself as a rational being. . . . But no rational man would dare say, �Do you remember the man you saw the day before yesterday on the Via Dolrosa, the one who looked up to the balcony of the corner house and who mother�you know her, the woman from X street�followed about half a block behind him, crying and leaning on the arm of Mrs. Magdelena? Well, he has come back to life!� Even in those days one couldn�t be that madly reckless. And the people of Jerusalem would have repudiated this maddest of all messages just as firmly as we would, if�if they hadn�t been bowled over by the upsetting facts" (Creed 76, 167).

"We ought to know what freight the decisive hour of our life is carrying. . . . We can miss the point of our life. One day it can all be lost. . . . [H]ell is like an alarm which is to make clear the seriousness of the decision before us. The decision is something that can be missed, and that then effects a separation. We can gamble our life away. We can miss its point. We can life in vain. This is an open possibility" (Creed 129).

"He who knows about depth knows about God."

"[it is] a disastrous distortion of the meaning of faith to identify it with the belief in the historical validity of the Biblical stories" (in Geisler 299).

Tillich interprets faith, as both Barth and Bultmann do, as the experience of grace when all the human securities of belief and action are shattered. It was this insight, he claims, which was the essence of the Protestant Reformers� doctrine that man is justified by faith; hence it may be called the Protestant Principle. The Reformers, however, explored the significance of this principle only in the religious-ethical sphere of life, whereas Tillich is impressed by its importance for the religious-intellectual sphere as well. Just as the Reformers argued that man is justified by faith even though a sinner, Tillich insists that man is reconciled to God even though he exists in the state of doubt, even doubt about God. "There is," he writes, "faith in every serious doubt, namely, the faith in the truth as such, even if the only truth we can express is our lack of truth." . . . [F]aith has to do with the question of the final meaning of life, man�s stance towards being itself. . . . [F]aith can appear when all traditional Christian belief and symbolism are rendered unintelligible. . . . It is, Tillich writes, " a disastrous distortion of the meaning of faith to identify it with the belief in the historical validity of the Biblical stories." . . . Faith is certain of only one thing, namely, the "appearance of that reality which has created the faith." One�s own participation in faith "guarantees a personal life in which the New Being has conquered the old being." Faith cannot, of course, guarantee that Jesus was the person who was the New Being, but whatever his name, the New Being occurred. No historical criticism can threaten this immediate awareness of those who have been actually transformed into faith. . . . It is the picture of Jesus that conveys the power which grasps the religious imagination . . . [All questions about the historicity of Bible stories] "must be decided, in terms of more or less probability, by historical research. They are questions of historical truth, not of the truth of faith. Faith can say that something of ultimate concern has happened in history because the question of the ultimate in being and meaning is involved. Faith can say that the Old Testament law which is given as the law of Moses has unconditional validity for those who are grasped by it, no matter how much or how little can be traced to a historical figure of that name. Faith can say that the reality which is manifest in the New Testament picture of Jesus as the Christ has saving power for those who are grasped by it, no matter how much or how little can be traced to the historical figure who is called Jesus of Nazareth." . . .

The function of these [New Testament] stories is not to convey historical information or to elicit assent to supernatural claims but to provide a rich series of narratives that the members of the Christian community can use to reflect on their lives. . . . [T]he most important thing about the Gospels . . . is that they provide pictures and imagery within which the imagination, so to speak, can dwell and that can be the basis for a call to a renewal of one�s life. In an important sense, it is religiously irrelevant whether this narrative is historically accurate or not. . . .

Indeed, if we understand properly what is meant by faith, then this faith has no clear relation to any particular set of historical beliefs at all. Faith has to do with one�s confidence in God, which is to say, with one�s surrender of his attempts to establish his own righteousness and his acceptance of his life and creation as a gift and a responsibility. It is trust and commitment. . . . The decision of faith [is] . . . Can the last power be trusted? Is God gracious? Is my life significant in some sense that transcends the world? (Harvey, xvi-xx, 280-281, 132-134, 138-142, 144-148, 150, 152-155).

"To think that a thing I explained fully by its origin and needs no further analysis or logical interpretation is an example of the genetic fallacy" (Titus 380).

"There is an interesting development of the idea of God among the early Hebrews as reflected in the writings of the Old Testament. In earlier portions of these writings, God is represented as a "local" deity residing on Mount Sinai and walking in the garden in the cool of the day. During the wanderings of the Israelites in the desert, He is pictured as traveling in an ark, or holy chest. At a still later date he is thought of as residing at Jerusalem, or He is considered the God of Palestine. When the Israelites wandered from this land, they left the presence of God. During the prophetic period and as a result of the Babylonian exile, the prophets assured the people that God was the God of all mankind and, moreover, that He loved righteousness and justice and hated iniquity and injustice. The idea of God becomes increasingly ethical and spiritual: God is interested in sincerity, purity, mercy, and truth" (Harold Titus, Living Issues in Philosophy 413).

"The greatest missionary is the Bible in the mother tongue. It never needs a furlough, is never considered a foreigner."

"I love this woman; I feel real love for the first and only time in my life. I know what has befallen me. I do not fear to be degraded by this feeling, I am not ashamed of my love, I am proud of it. It is not my fault that I love. It has come about against my will. I tried to escape from my love by self-renunciation, but thereby only stirred up my jealousy. This is not the ideal, the so-called exalted love which I have known before; not that sort of attachment in which you admire your own love and feel that the source of your emotion is within yourself and do everything yourself. I have felt that too. It is still less a desire for enjoyment: it is something different. Perhaps in her I love nature: the personification of all that is beautiful in nature; but yet I am not acting by my own will, but some elemental force loves through me; the whole of God's world, all nature, presses this love into my soul and says, 'Love her.' I love her not with my mind or my imagination, but with my whole being. Loving her I feel myself to be an integral part of all God's joyous world" (The Cossacks).

"It is easier to write ten volumes of philosophy than to put one into practice."

"Art is not a handicraft, it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced."

"When I turned to the physical branch of science, I obtained an endless number of exact answers to questions I had not proposed�about the chemical elements of the stars and planets; about the movement of the sun with the constellation of Hercules; on the origin of species and of man; about the infinitely small and weightless particles of ether: but the only answer to my question about the meaning of life was this, �You are what you call life; that is a temporary and accidental agglomeration of particles. The mutual action and reaction of these particles on each other has produced what you call your life. This agglomeration will continue during a certain time, then the reciprocal action of these particles will cease, and with it ends what you call your life and all your questions as well. You are an accidentally combined lump of something. The lump undergoes decomposition; this decomposition men call life; the lump falls asunder, decomposition ceases, and with it all doubting.� This is the answer from the clear and positive side of human knowledge, and if true to its own principles it can give no other" (Tolstoy, Confessions 26).

"The gilt will come off and the pigskin will remain" [simplicity and truth remain after excess goes away]

"Levin had often noticed in discussions between the most intelligent people that after enormous efforts, and an enormous expenditure of logical subtleties and words, the disputants finally arrived at being aware that what they had so long been struggling to prove to one another had long ago, from the beginning of the argument, been known to both, but that they liked different things, and would not define what they liked for fear of its being attacked. He had often had the experience of suddenly in a discussion grasping what it was his oponent liked and at once liking it too, and immediately he found himself agreeing, and then all arguments fell away as useless. Sometimes, too, he had experienced the opposite, expressing at last what he liked himself, which he was devising arguments to defend, ad chancing to express it well and genuinely, he had found his opponent at once agreeing and ceasing to dispute his position" (Tolstoy Anna 505).

[Kitty about Lenin�s unbelief]: "His confession of unbelief passed unnoticed. She was religious, and had never doubted the truths of religion, but his external unbelief did not affect her in the least. Through love she knew all his soul, and in his soul she saw what she wanted, and that such a state of soul should be called unbelieving was to her a matter of no account. . . . In spite of his assertion to the contrary, she was firmly persuaded that he was as much a Christian as she, and indeed a far better one; and that all he had said about it was simply one of his absurd masculine freaks" (Tolstoy Anna 519, 613).

"The proof that they knew for certainty the nature of death lay in the fact that they knew for a certainty without a second of hesitation how to deal with the dying and were not frightened of them. Levin and other men like him, though they could have said a great deal about death, obviously did not know this since they were afraid of death, and were absolutely at a loss what to do when people were dying" (Tolstoy Anna 629).

"�Lord have mercy on us! pardon us! aid us!� he repeated the word that for some reason came suddenly to his lips. And he, an unbeliever, repeated these word not with this lips only. And at that instant he knew that all his doubts, even the impossibility of believing with his reason, of which he was aware in himself, did not in the least hinder his turning to God. All of that now floated in his soul like dust. To whom was he to turn if not to Him in whose hands he felt himself, his soul, and his love?" (Tolstoy Anna 892).

[Birth and death]: "Yet that grief and this joy were alike outside the ordinary conditions of life; they were loopholes, as it were, in that ordinary life through which there came glimpses of something sublime. And in the contemplation of this sublime something the soul was exalted to inconceivable heights of which it had before had no conception, while reason lagged behind, unable to keep up with it" (Tolstoy Anna 898).

"Instinctively, unconsciously, with every book, with every conversation, with every man he met, he was on the lookout for light on these questions and their solution" (Tolstoy Anna 989).

"What puzzled and distracted him above everything was that the majority of men of his age and circle had, like him, exhanged their old beliefs for the same new convivtions, and yet saw nothing to lament in this, and were perfectly satisfied and serene" (Tolstoy Anna 989).

"When he did not think, but simply lived, he was continually aware of the presence of an infallible judge in his soul, determining which of two possible courses of action was the better and which was the worse, and as soon as he did not act rightly, he was at once aware of it" (Tolstoy Anna 995).

"Isn�t it distinctly to be seen in the development of every philosopher�s theory, that he knows what is the chief significance of life beforehand, just as positively as the peasant Fyodor, and not a bit more clearly than he, and is simply trying by a dubious intellectual path to come back to what every one knows. . . . the chief thing�faith in God, in goodness, as the one goal of man�s destiny" (Tolstoy Anna 1004-5).

"I shall go on in the same way, losing my temper with Ivan the coachman, falling into angry discussions, expressing my opinions tactlessly; there will be still the same wall between the holy of holies of my soul and other people, even my wife; I shall still go on scolding her for my own terror, and being remorseful for it; I shall still be as unable to understand with my reason why I pray, and I shall still go on praying; but my life now, my whole life apart from anything that can happen to me, every minute of it is no more meaningless, as it was before, but it has the positive meaning of goodness, which I have the power to put into it" (Tolstoy Anna 1027).

�The satisfaction of one�s needs�good health, cleanliness, and freedom�now that he was deprived of all this, seemed to Pierre to constitute perfect happiness; and the choice of occupation, that is of his way of life�now that that choice was so restricted�seemed to him such an easy matter that he forgot that a superfluity of the comforts of life destroys all joy in satisfying one�s needs, while great freedom in the choice of occupation�such freedom as his wealth, his education, and his social position had given him in his own life�is just what makes the choice of occupation insolubly difficult and destroys the desire and possibility of having an occupation� (War and Peace 1123).

�We don�t love people for the good they have done us, but for the good we have done them.� (War and Peace 109)

�It is very difficult to tell the truth, and young people are rarely capable of it.� �His hearers expected a story of how beside himself and all aflame with excitement, he had flown like a storm at the square, cut himself in . . . And so he told them that� (War and Peace 260).

�he had been vicious only because he had somehow forgotten how good it is to be virtuous� (War and Peace 385).

�But he was so busy for whole days together that he had no time to notice that he was thinking of nothing� (War and Peace 471).

�Every violent reform deserves censure, for it quite fails to remedy evil while men remain what they are� (War and Peace 476).

�terrible contrast between something infinitely great and illimitable within him and that limited and material something that he, and even she, was� (War and Peace 512).

�She could not write, because she could not conceive the possibility of expressing sincerely in a letter even a thousandth part of what she expressed by voice, smile, and glance� (War and Peace 588).

�My boy is growing up and rejoices in life, in which like everybody else he will deceive or be deceived� (War and Peace 700).

�He now experienced a glad consciousness that everything that constitutes men�s happiness�the comforts of life, wealth, even life itself�is rubbish it is pleasant to throw away, compared with something . . . With what?� (War and Peace 840).

�Man can be master of nothing while he who does not fear it possesses all. If there were no suffering, man would not know his limitations, would not know himself� (War and Peace 941).

�nothing in this world is terrible. . . . as there is no condition in which man can be happy and entirely free, so there is no condition in which he need be unhappy and lack freedom� (War and Peace 1176).

�there is no greatness where simplicity, goodness, and truth are absent� (War and Peace 1187).

�The satisfaction of one�s needs�good health, cleanliness, and freedom�now that he was deprived of all this, seemed to Pierre to constitute perfect happiness; and the choice of occupation, that is of his way of life�now that that choice was so restricted�seemed to him such an easy matter that he forgot that a superfluity of the comforts of life destroys all joy in satisfying one�s needs, while great freedom in the choice of occupation�such freedom as his wealth, his education, and his social position had given him in his own life�is just what makes the choice of occupation insolubly difficult and destroys the desire and possibility of having an occupation� (1123).

�In the past he had never been able to find that great inscrutable infinite something. He had only felt that it must exist somewhere and had looked for it. In everything near and comprehensible he had seen only what was limited, petty, commonplace, and senseless. He had equipped himself with a mental telescope and looked into remote space, where petty worldliness hiding itself in misty distance had seemed to him great and infinite merely because it was not clearly seen. And such had European life, politics, Freemasonry, philosophy, and philanthropy seemed to him. But even then, at moments of weakness as he had accounted them, his mind had penetrated to those distances and he had there seen the same pettiness, worldliness, and senselessness. Now, however, he had learned to see the great, eternal, and infinite in everything, and therefore�to see it and enjoy its contemplation�he naturally threw away the telescope through which he had till now gazed over men�s heads, and gladly regarded the ever-changing, eternally great, unfathomable, and infinite life around him. And the closer he looked the more tranquil and happy he became. That dreadful question, �What for?� which had formerly destroyed all his mental edifices, no longer existed for him. To that question, �What for?� a simple answer was now always ready in his soul: �Because there is a God, that God without whose will not one hair falls from a man�s head�� (War and Peace 1226-27).

�Pierre�s insanity consisted in not waiting, as he used to do, to discover personal attributes which he termed �good qualities� in people before loving them; his heart was now overflowing with love, and by loving people without cause he discovered innumerable causes for loving them� (War and Peace 1248).

�as soon as there is no freedom there is also no man� (War and Peace 1346).

"The religious atmosphere of the country was the first thing that struck me on arrival to the United States . . . [I]n France I had seen the spirits of religion and of freedom almost always marching in opposite directions. In America, I found them intimately linked together in joint reign over the same land . . . [The main reason for the amount of religious activity in America is] separation of church and state . . . throughout my stay in America I met nobody, lay or cleric, who did not agree about that. . . . [R]eligion in America takes no direct part in the government of society, but it must be regarded as the first of their political institutions. . . . I am sure that [all Americans] think it necessary to the maintenance of republican institutions. That is not the view of one class or party among the citizens, but of the whole nation; it is found in all its ranks."

"I sought to the greatness and genius of America in her commodious harbors and her ample rivers�and it was not there . . . in her fertile fields and boundless forests�and it was not there . . . in her rich mines and her vast world commerce�and it was not there . . . in her democratic Congress and her matchless Constitution�and it was not there. Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because she is good, and if America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great."

"the movement of faith is one in which we cast ourselves in utter reliance and trust upon God and that we let all our own vaunted possessions and notions be called in question�this applies to the material content of faith, justification by the grace of God alone, but also to the way in which we reach this knowledge of the divine mercy, for the act of total reliance upon God cuts away the ground for any presupposition or antecedent preparation on our part. To commit ourselves to God in faith means that we let ourselves be called into question so radically that we are stripped of all our presuppositions. Hence in the very knowledge of God the movement of faith means that we refer everything to God in accordance with his absolute priority and nothing to ourselves. . . . [Luther contends] that the point where we feel ourselves under attack from the Scripture, where our natural reason is offended by it, and where we are flung into tumults, is the very point where genuine interpretation can take place and profound understanding can be reached. It is then and only then that the Word of the Lord actually gets across to us, that we can let ourselves be told something which we cannot tell ourselves, and really learn something which we cannot think up for ourselves" (Torrance 64, 158).

"civilizations, I believe, come to birth and proceed to grow by successfully responding to successive challenges. They break down and go to pieces if and when a challenge confronts them which they fail to meet."

�Being has ceased to have much appeal for people and doing engages almost everyone�s attention. Modern Christians know almost nothing about the inner life.�

�The true Christian ideal is not to be happy but to be holy.�

�A good personality and a shrewd knowledge of human nature are all that any man needs to be a success in religious circles today.�

�To have found God and still to pursue him is the soul�s paradox of love.�

�Now there are five vows I have in mind which we do well to make and keep. 1. Deal thoroughly with sin. 2. Never own anything�get rid of the sense of possessing. 3. Never defend yourself. 4. Never pass anything on about anybody else that will hurt him. 5. Never accept any glory.

�You should think ten times more than you read.�

�Man is bored because he is too big to be happy with that which sin is giving him. God has made him too great, his potential too mighty.�

�All the Christians I meet who are amounting to anything for God are Christians who are very much out of key with their age�very, very much out of tune with their generation.�

"All is wonder; to make a man is at least as great a marvel as to raise a man from the dead. The seed that multiples in the furrow is as the bread that multiplies in Christ�s hands. The miracles is not greater manifestation than God�s power than those ordinary and ever-repeated processes; but it is a different manifestation" (Trench, Notes on the Miracles of Our Savior).

"In the last analysis we are concerned not with Christianity but with the truth, and we are without doubt not yet at a point where there might be a religious truth beyond Christianity. The abstract possibility of such developments in the future does not need to confuse us. We seek God as he turns towards us in the present, and in this respect that which he says to us in Christ and in the prophets is by no means superseded, but rather remains yet the only power which provides among us simple health and living profundity, true reverence and beatifying trust" (Ernst Troeltsch, 1913).

"One of the best contributions which Christian thought can make to the thought of the world is the repetition that life is complex. It is part of the Christian understanding of reality that all simplistic answers to basic questions are bound to be false. Over and over, the answer is both-and rather than either-or.

"When you have an efficient government, you have a dictatorship."

"Take what you can yourself, and don't let others get you into their hands; to belong to oneself, that is the whole thing in life� (First Love 50).

"'Do you know what really makes a man free...Will, your own will, and it gives power which is better that liberty. Know how to want, and you'll be free, and you'll be master too'� (First Love 50).

"It is sweet to be the sole source, the arbitrary and irresponsible source of the greatest joys and profoundest miseries to someone else. I was like soft wax in the hands of Zinaida . . .� (First Love 53).

"'No! I cannot love people whom I find that I look down on. I need someone who will himself master me, but then, goodness me, I shall never come across anyone like that. I shall never fall into anybody's clutches, never, never'� (First Love 55).

"I was depressed, frustrated and overcome by a new, quite unfamiliar kind of sadness, as if something in me were dying� (First Love 89).

"I cannot begin to convey the feelings with which I left her. I never wish to experience them again, but I should count it a misfortune never to have had them at all� (First Love 97).

"My son, beware of the love of women; beware of that ecstasy- that slow poison� (First Love 103).

"During the past month, I had suddenly grown much older, and my love, with all its violent excitements and its torments, now seemed even to me so very puny and childish and trivial beside that other unknown something which I could hardly begin to guess at, but which struck terror into me like an unfamiliar, beautiful but awe-inspiring face whose features one strains in vain to discern in the gathering darkness. So that was to be the final answer to it all. So that [death] was the final goal towards which this young life, all glitter and ardor and excitement went hurrying along� (First Love 105).

"O youth! Youth! You go your way heedless, uncaring - as if you owned the treasures of the world; even grief elates you...You are self-confident and . . . say, 'I alone am alive - behold!' even while your own days fly past and vanish without trace and without number, and everything within you melts away like wax in the sun...like snow...and perhaps the whole secret of your enchantment lies not, indeed, in your power to think that there is nothing you will not do: it is this that you scatter to the winds - gifts which you could never have used to any other purpose. Each of us feels most deeply convinced that he has been too prodigal of his gifts- that he has a right to cry, 'Oh, what could I not have done, if only I had not wasted my time.'

And here I am...what did I hope - what did I expect? What rich promise did the future seem to hold out to me, when scarcely a sigh - only a bleak sense of utter desolation - I took my leave from the brief phantom, risen for a fleeting instant, of my first love?

What has come of it all - of all that I hoped for? And now when the shades of evening are beginning to close upon my life, what have I left that is fresher, dearer to me, than the memories of that brief storm that came and went so swiftly one morning in the spring?

But I do myself an injustice. Even then, in those light-hearted days of youth, I did not close my eyes to the mournful voice which called to me, the solemn sound which came to me from beyond the grave.

I remember how several days after that on which I had learnt of Zinaida's death, I myself, obeying an irresistible impulse, was present at the death of a poor old woman who lived in the same house with us. Covered with rags, lying on bare boards, with a sack for a pillow, her end was hard and painful. Her whole life was spent in a bitter struggle with daily want, she had no joy, had never tasted the sweets of happiness- surely she would welcome death with gladness- its deliverance - and peace? Yet so long as her frail body resisted obstinately, her breast rose and fell in agony under the icy hand that was laid upon it, so long as any strength was left within her, the little old woman kept crossing herself, kept whispering, 'Lord, forgive me my sins...' and not until the last spark of consciousness had gone, did the look of fear, of the terror of death, vanish from her eyes...and I remember that there, by the death-bed of that poor woman, I grew afraid, afraid for Zinaida, and I wanted to say a prayer for her, for my father - and for myself� (First Love 105-107).

Mark Twain

"Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved."

"It ain�t those parts of the Bible that I can�t understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand."

"Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example."

Miguel de Unamuno

"Faith which does not doubt is dead faith" (Miguel de Unamuno).

Vincent Van Gogh

"Do you know what frees one from this captivity? It is every serious, deep affection. Being friends, being brothers, love, that is what opens the prison by some supreme power, by some magic force. Without this, one remains in prison. Where sympathy is renewed, life is restored."

Henry Van Dike

Joyful, Joyful, we adore Thee, God of glory, Lord of love;
Hearts unfold like flowers before Thee, Opening to the Sun above.
Melt the clouds of sin and sadness; Drive the dark of doubt away;
Giver of immortal gladness, Fill us with the light of day!
All thy works with joy surround Thee; Earth and heav�n reflect Thy rays,
Stars and angels sing around Thee, Center of unbroken praise.
Field and forest, vale and mountain, Flowery meadow, flashing sea,
Chanting bird and flowing fountain Call us to rejoice in Thee.
Thou art giving and forgiving, Ever blessing, ever blest,
Wellsping of the joy of living, Ocean-depth of happy rest!
Thou our Father, Christ our brother�All who live in love are Thine;
Teach us how to love each other, lift us to the joy divine.
Mortals, join the mighty chorus Which the morning stars began;
Father love is reigning over us, Brother love binds man to man.
Ever-singing, march we onward, Victors in the midst of strife;
Joyful music leads us sunward In the triumph song of life. Amen. (Hymn to Joy; Music: Beethoven 1824; Lyrics: Henry Van Dyke 1907)

"If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him"

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"

"Let no man pull you so low as to make you hate him."

"No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the Invisible Hand [of God] which conducts the affairs of men more than those of the United States . . . [T]he foundation of our national policy will be laid in the pure and immutable principles of private morality . . . [T]here is no truth more thoroughly established than that there exists in the economy and course of nature an indissoluble union between virtue and happiness" [First Inaugural Address (April 30, 1789)]. Commager (ed.) Documents of American History, p. 152.

"Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, the firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connection with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked, Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert? . . . And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion . . . [R]eason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle" [Farewell Address (September 17, 1796)]. Commager (ed.) Documents of American History, p. 173.

"It may be laid down as a primary position, and the basis of our system, that every citizen who enjoys the protection of a free government, owes not only a proportion of his property, but even his personal services to the defense of it."

"A right faith is always a reasonable faith; that is to say, it is accorded only to an authority which commends itself to reason as a sound authority, which it would be unreasonable not to trust. . . . If the problem of dogmatic authority is pressed, it either descends to irrationalism, or it leaves its claims to primacy and pleads the primacy of truth. The Scriptures tell us to test the spirits (I John 4:1). This can be done only by applying the canons of truth. God cannot lie. His authority, therefore, and coherent truth are coincident at every point. Truth, not blind authority, saves us from being blind followers of the blind" (in Carnell 73).

"The supreme proof to every Christian of the deity of his Lord is his own inner experience of the transforming power of his Lord upon the heart and life" (Fundamentals 2:239).

"It is to theology, as such, a matter of entire indifference how long man has existed on earth" (Schaeffer Complete 2:111).

"communism is, in fact, exteriorization. Communism is the enemy of interiorization, of the inner man. If we had leftist tendencies, fantasies, and fascinations and were spellbound by Communism, it was because we had seen both the treachery and the danger of interiorization. But today we know what exteriorization leads to: the killing of the inner man, and that is the essence of Stalinism. The essence of Stalinism is the poisoning of the inner man so that it becomes shrunken the way headhunters shrink heads�those shriveled little heads�and then disappears completely. . . . The inner man must be killed for the communist Decalogue to be lodged in the soul" (92).

"There was only one alternative [communism], only one global answer to negation. The entire illness stemmed from that need, that hunger for something all-embracing. In fact, communism arose to satisfy certain hungers. The phenomena was inevitable insofar as powerful hungers had arisen in modern societies, even in those of the nineteenth century. One of those hungers was a hunger for a catechism, a simple catechism. That sort of hunger burns in refined intellectuals much more than it does in the man on the street. The man on the street always had a catechism; he replaced one catechism with another" (21).

"I couldn�t bear nihilism, or let�s say atheism. . . . The intellectual who has lost confidence in everything and everyone cannot live like that" (20, 22).

"If the human voice, manmade instruments, and the human soul can create, even once in all of history, such harmony, beauty, truth, and power in such unity of inspiration�if this exists, then how ephemeral, what a nonentity, all the might of the empire must be, that might that a beautiful Polish carol says �quakes in fear�" (241, on Bach�s St. Matthew�s Passion).

* "Twenty minutes is enough for the most important thing in your life to happen."

(My Century: The Odyssey of a Polish Intellectual, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988).

"If we work upon marble it will perish; if we work upon brass, time will efface it; if we rear temples, they will crumble into dust; but if we work upon immortal minds, if we imbue them with principles, with just the fear of God and love of our fellow men, we engrave on those tablets something which will brighten all eternity."

"If we abide by the principles taught in the Bible, our country will go on prospering; but if we and our posterity neglect its instructions and authority, no man can tell how sudden a catastrophe may overwhelm us and bury all our glory in profound obscurity."

"When the danger past, God is forgotten."

"There is no evil that we cannot either face or fly from, but the consciousness of duty disregarded. A sense of duty pursues us ever. It is omnipresent, like the Deity. If we take to ourselves the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, duty performed or duty violated is still with us, for our happiness or our misery. If we say the darkness shall cover us, in the darkness as in the light our obligations are yet with us."

"Philosophical argument, especially that drawn from the vastness of the universe, in comparison with the apparent insignificance of this globe, has sometimes shaken my reason for the faith which is in me; but my heart has always assured me that the gospel of Jesus Christ must be divine reality. The Sermon on the Mount cannot be a mere human production. This belief enters into the very depth of my conscience" (epitaph, dictated day before death).

"if you look for anything but more love, you are looking wide of the mark, you are getting out of the royal way. And when you are asking others, 'Have you received this or that blessing?' if you mean anything but more love, you mean wrong; you are leading them out of the way, and putting them upon a false scent. Settle it then in your heart, that from the moment God has saved you from all sin, you are to aim at nothing more, but more of that love described in the thirteenth of the Corinthians. You can go no higher than this, till you are carried into Abraham's bosom" (VOLUME FOUR \ JOURNAL FROM SEPTEMBER 4, 1782, TO JUNE 28, 1786, Page 329).

Sola-scriptura: "The whole counsel of God, concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man�s salvation, faith and life, is either explicitly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture; to which nothing at any time is to be added, whether by new revelations of the Spirit, or traditions of men" (in McGrath 53).

"If I had a mind to hinder the progress of the Gospel, and to establish the kingdom of darkness, I would go about telling people they might have the Spirit of God, and yet not feel it."

"So many gods, so many creeds,
So many paths that wind and wind,
While just the art of being kind
Is all the world needs" (Ella Wilcox).

"Ultimately the bond of all companionship, whether in marriage or in friendship, is conversation."

"A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing."

"Experience, the name men give to their miseries" (Pilot One).

"There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about and that is not being talked about. Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else�s opinions, the lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation" (Pilot One).

"When you have read the Bible, you will know it is the word of God, because you will have found it the key to your own heart, your own happiness, and your own duty."

"...what is the use of studying philosophy if it does not improve your thinking about the important questions of everyday life?"

"Where two principles really do meet which cannot be reconciled with one another, then each man declares the other a fool and a heretic" (On Certainty)

"We feel that even when all possible scientific questions have been answered, the problems of life remain completely untouched. Of course there are then no questions left, and this itself is the answer" (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], trans. D. F. Pears and B. F. McGuinness (London and Henley: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1961), 6.52, p. 73).

"the way they are now, I don't see there's much difference between the Fromes up at the farm and the Fromes down in the graveyard; cept' that down there they're all quiet, and the women have got to hold their tongues" (Ethan Frome 132-133).

"He reviewed his friends' marriages-the supposedly happy ones-and saw none that answered, even remotely, to the passionate and tender comradeship which he pictured as his permanent relation with May Welland. He perceived that such a picture presupposed, on her part, the experience, the versatility, the freedom of judgment, which she had been carefully trained not to possess; and with a shiver of foreboding he saw his marriage becoming what most of the other marriages about him were: a dull association of material and social interests held together by ignorance on one side and hypocrisy on the other.

The result, of course, was that the young girl who was the center of this elaborate system of mystification remained the more inscrutable for her very frankness and assurance. She was frank, poor darling, because she had nothing to conceal, assured because she knew of nothing to be on her guard against; and with no better preparation than this, she was to be plunged overnight into what people evasively called 'the facts of life.'...But when he had gone the brief round of her, he was discouraged by the thought that all this frankness and innocence were only an artificial product. Untrained human nature was not frank and innocent; it was full of the twists and defenses of an instinctive guile. And he felt himself oppressed by this creation of factious purity, so cunningly manufactured by a conspiracy of mothers, and aunts and grandmothers and long-dead ancesstresses, because it was supposed to be what he wanted, what he had a right to, in order that he might exercise his lordly pleasure in smashing it like an image made of snow" (Age of Innocence 41-43).

"'Yes, she [Newland's mother] is [an old maid], and so are the van der Ludens, and so are we all, when it comes to being so much as brushed by the wing-tip of Reality'... " (Age of Innocence 84).

"he bent and laid his lips on her hands, which were cold and lifeless. She drew them away, and he turned to the door, found his coat and hat under the faint gaslight of the hall, and plunged out into the winter night bursting with the belated eloquence of the inarticulate" (Age of Innocence 111).

"He asked himself if May's face was doomed to thicken into the same middle-aged image of invincible innocence [as her mother]. Ah no, he did not want May to have that kind of innocence, the innocence that seals the mind against imagination and the heart against experience! " (Age of Innocence 144-145).

"Archer had reverted to all his old inherited ideas about marriage. It was less trouble to conform with the tradition and treat May exactly as all his friends treated their wives than to try to put into practice the theories which his untrammeled bachelorhood had dallied. There was no use in trying to emancipate a wife who had not the dimmest notion that she was not free; and he had long since discovered that May's only use of liberty she supposed herself to possess would be to lay it at the alter of her wifely adoration" (Age of Innocence 196).

"he took refuge in the comforting platitude that the first six months were always the most difficult in marriage. 'After that I suppose we shall have pretty nearly finished rubbing off each other's angles'...but the worst of it was that May's pressure was already bearing on the very angles who sharpness he most wanted to keep" (Age of Innocence 204).

"[Newland] had married (as most young men did) because he had met a perfectly charming girl at the moment when a series of rather aimless sentimental adventures were ending in premature disgust; and she represented peace, stability, comradeship, and the steadying sense of an inescapable duty" (Age of Innocence 208).

"[Beaufort's] contemptuous tribute to May's 'niceness' was just what a husband should have wished to hear said of his wife. The fact that a course-minded man found her lacking in attraction was simply another proof of her quality; yet the word sent a faint shiver through his heart. What if 'niceness' carried to that supreme degree, were only a negation, the curtain dropped before an emptiness? As he looked at May...he had the feeling that he had never yet lifted that curtain" (Age of Innocence 212).

"Archer was dealing hurriedly with crowding thoughts. His whole future seemed suddenly to be unrolled before him; and passing down its endless emptiness he saw the dwindling figure of a man to whom nothing was ever to happen" (Age of Innocence 228).

"There they were, close together and safe and shut in; yet so chained so their separate destines that they might as well have been half the world apart" (Age of Innocence 245).

"Since then there had been no farther communication between them, and he had built up within himself a kind of sanctuary in which she throned among the secret thoughts and longings. Little by little it became the scene of his real life, of his only rational activities; thither he brought the books he read, the ideas and feelings which nourished him, his judgments and his visions. Outside it, in the scene of his actual life, he moved with a growing sense of unreality and insufficiency, blundering against familiar prejudices and traditional points of view as an absent-minded man goes on bumping into the furniture of his own room. Absent�that's what he was: so absent from everything most densely real and near to those about him that it sometimes startled him to find that they still imagined he was there" (Age of Innocence 265).

"Archer was burning with unavailing wrath: he was exactly in the state when a man is sure to do something stupid, knowing all the while that he is doing it" (Age of Innocence 267).

"It did not hurt him half as much to tell May an untruth as to see her trying to pretend that she did not detect him" (Age of Innocence 285).

"I want�I want somehow to get away with you into a world where word like that [mistress]�categories like that�won't exist. Where we shall simply be two human beings who love each other, who are the whole of life to each other; and nothing else on earth will matter" [Newland] "Oh, my dear--where is that country? . . . I know so many who've tried to find it; . . . and it wasn't at all different from the old world they'd left, but only rather smaller and dingier and more promiscuous" (Age of Innocence 293).

"He said to himself with a secret dismay that he would always know the thoughts behind it [May's brow], that never, in all the years to come, would she surprise him by an unexpected mood, by a new idea, a weakness, a cruelty, or an emotion. She had spent her poetry and romance on their short courting: the function was exhausted because the need was past. Now she was ripening into a copy of her mother, trying to turn him into a Mr. Welland" (Age of Innocence 298).

"[May was] so lacking in imagination, so incapable of growth, that the world of her youth had fallen into pieces and rebuilt itself without her ever being conscious of the change. This hard blindness had kept her immediate horizon apparently unaltered...And she died, thinking the world a good place, full of loving and harmonious households like her own, and resigned to leave it because she was convinced that whatever happened, Newland would inculcate in Dallas [their son] the same principles and prejudices which had shaped his parents' lives... " (Age of Innocence 351).

"He felt shy, old-fashioned, inadequate: a mere speck of a man compared with the ruthless magnificent fellow he had dreamed of being" (Age of Innocence 357).

"During that time he had been living with his youthful memory of her; she had doubtless had other and more tangible companionship. Perhaps she too had taken her memory of him as something apart; but if she had, it must have been like a relic in a small dim chapel, where there was not time to pray every day" (Age of Innocence 362).

"It's more real to me here than if I went up' he suddenly heard himself say; and the fear lest that last shadow of reality should lose its edge kept him rooted to his seat...At [the man-servant�s closing the shutters], as if it had been the signal he waited for, Newland Archer got up slowly and walked back alone to his hotel" (Age of Innocence 365).

"If my faith be false, I ought to change it; whereas if it be true, I am bound to propagate it."

"If they have discredited the testimony of witnesses, who are said at least to have been disinterested, and to have braved persecutions and death in support of their assertions,�can these philosophers consistently listen to and believe the testimony of those who avowedly get money by the tales they publish, and who do not even pretend that they incur any serious risk in case of being detected in a falsehood?" (Carnell 267).

"If there was any plan in the universe at all, if there were any pattern in a human life, surely it could be discovered mysteriously latent in those lives so suddenly cut off. Either we live by accident and die by accident or we live by plan and die by plan� (Bridge of the San Juis Rey 19).

"He had lost that privilege of simple nature, the disassociation of love and pleasure. Pleasure was no longer as simple as eating; it was being complicated by love. Now was beginning that crazy loss of one's self, that neglect of everything but one's dramatic thoughts about the beloved, that feverish inner life all turning upon the Perichole and which would have so astonished and disgusted her had she been permitted to divine it� (Bridge of the San Juis Rey 99).

"Now he discovered that secret from which one never quite recovers, that even in the most perfect love one person loves more profoundly than the other� (Bridge of the San Juis Rey 100).

"And at once he sacrificed everything to it, if it can be said that we ever sacrifice anything save what we know we can never attain, or what some secret wisdom tells us it would be uncomfortable to possess� (Bridge of the San Juis Rey 109).

"Such love [passion], though it expends itself in generosity and thoughtfulness, though it give birth to visions and to great poetry, remains among the sharpest expressions of self-interest. Not until it has passed through a long servitude, through its own self-hatred, through mockery, through great doubts, can it take its place among the loyalties. Many who have spent a lifetime in it can tell us less of love than the child that lost a dog yesterday� (Bridge of the San Juis Rey 196).

"He [Brother Juniper] thought he saw in the same accident, the wicked visited early by destruction and the good called early to Heaven. He thought he saw pride and wealth confounded as an object lesson to the world, and he thought he saw humility crowned and rewarded for the edification of the city� (Bridge of the San Juis Rey 219).

"But soon we shall die and all memory of those five will have left the earth and we ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten. But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning� (Bridge of the San Juis Rey 235).

�Dr. Gillies was lying for all he was worth. He had no doubt that the coming century would be too direful to contemplate�that is to say, like all the other centuries� (Wilder The Eighth Day 17).

�There are no Golden Ages and no Dark Ages. There is the oceanlike monotony of the generations of men under the alternations of fair and foul weather� (Wilder The Eighth Day 18).

�It is the duty of old men to lie to the young. Let them encounter their own delusions. We strengthen our souls, when young, on hope; the strength we acquire enables us later to endure despair as a Roman should� (Wilder The Eighth Day 18).

�Hope (deep-grounded hope, not those sporadic cries and promptings wrung from us in extremity that more resemble despair) is a climate of mind and an organ of apprehension� (Wilder The Eighth Day 37).

�Hope, like faith, is nothing if not courageous; it is nothing if it is not ridiculous. The defeat of hope leads not to despair, but to resignation. The resignation of those who have had a grasp of hope retains hope�s power� (Wilder The Eighth Day 71).

�they, too, stood for a moment . . . longing for something they had read about, for something that may not exist�friendship� (Wilder The Eighth Day 81).

�We were shaken into existence, like dice from a box� (Wilder The Eighth Day 107).

�The spectacle that most discourages them [people of faith] is not error or ignorance or cruelty, but sloth. This work that they do often seems to be all but imperceptible. That is characteristic of activity that never for a moment envisages an audience� (Wilder The Eighth Day 107).

�But better men than you and I have been ambushed, greater hopes than you and I have been brought down like a house of cards. . . . if the spectacle of one defeat or a hundred defeats discouraged a man, civilization wouldn�t have gone anywhere. There�d be no justice on earth, no hospitals, no homes, no friendships like yours and mine. There�d just be moaning people, creeping about� (Wilder The Eighth Day 115).

�When God loves a creature to know the highest happiness and the deepest misery�then he can die. He wants to know all that being alive can bring. That is His best gift. . . . There is no happiness for those who have not looked at the horror and the nada� (Wilder The Eighth Day 135).

�[Wife-beaters] are devoted husbands and fathers. They get drunk in order to be brutal, to release themselves to strike at God� (Wilder The Eighth Day 140).

�Adoration of a human being, under guise of self-effacement and humility, advances large claims and is an attempt at possession� (Wilder The Eighth Day 148).

�The world was a place of cruelty, suffering, and confusion, but men and women could surmount despair by making beautiful things, emulating the beauty of the first creation� (151).

�He was filled with awe�that grateful wonder�that life permits us to repay old debts, to redeem old businesses, old stupidities� (Wilder The Eighth Day 178).

�Doers of good have their seasons of weakness. They know there is no spiritual vulgarity equal to that of expecting gratitude and admiration, but they allow themselves to be seduced by the sweet fantasies of self-pity� (Wilder The Eighth Day 182).

�The great persuaders are those without principles; sincerity stammers� (Wilder The Eighth Day 186).

�Life is a series of disappointments. . . . Life is a series of promises that come to nothing� (Wilder The Eighth Day 198).

�There is no true education save in answer to urgent questioning� (Wilder The Eighth Day 222).

�His parents were both forty when he was ten, which is to say they were beginning to be resigned to the knowledge that life was disappointing and basically meaningless; they were busily clutching at its secondary compensations: the esteem and (hopefully) the envy of the community in so far as they can be purchased by money and acquired by circumspect behavior, by an unremitting air of perfect contentment, and by that tone of moral superiority . . . � (Wilder The Eighth Day 298).

�beautiful things [are] not for our possession but for our contemplation� (Wilder The Eighth Day 338).

�Sometimes I�m so happy I could crush the universe in my arms for love� (Wilder The Eighth Day 383).

Thomas Williams explains this subtle but profound concept in Augustine:

Genuine freedom involves using one�s metaphysical [libertarian] freedom to cleave to the eternal law, to love what is good, to submit to the truth. . . . the fundamental human desire is to be in the fullest possible sense. But as we have seen, to be means to have a nature. So the only ultimately satisfying thing for human beings is to live up to their nature. When the will turns away from the highest good to lower foods, it frustrates the very law of its nature, putting what is inferior above what is superior, subjecting itself to the things it ought to master. The only genuine freedom, then, is submission to the truth. In other words, obedience to the eternal law, which is no arbitrary pronouncement but the rules for action which are stamped on our very nature, is our only security against frustration, dissatisfaction, confusion, and the tyranny of bad habits and misplaced priorities. . . . An apple falling from a tree has no choice whether to obey the law f gravity. It has no option to frustrate its own nature. But since the will is free, it has a choice whether to obey the eternal law. Human beings can voluntarily wreck their lives by running afoul of the laws that govern their nature. This is indeed a sort of freedom, but it can hardly be the best sort. . . . [To be] genuinely free [is to be] free from a hopeless struggle against itself, free to become what it most truly is" (Free Choice xviii-xix).

"Not choice but habit governs the unreflecting herd"

"Now the belief in God may turn out at the last trump to be a mistake. Meantime, let us be quite clear, it is not merely the comfort of the simple, though it is that, too, much to its glory�it is a formidable intellectual position with which most of the first class minds of the human race, century in and century out, have concurred, each in his own way" (This is My God, quoted in McCarthy "Why I am a Catholic" in Delaney 146).

"A Christian is a man who feels
Repentance on a Sunday
For what he did on a Sunday
And is going to do on Monday" (Ybarra, d.1880).

"Why am I a Christian? I sometimes ask myself, and to be perfectly honest the reasons reduce to two: 1) the lack of good alternatives, and 2) Jesus. Brilliant, untamed, tender, creative, slippery, irreducible, paradoxically humble�Jesus stands up to scrutiny. He is who I want my God to be" (Yancey, The Jesus I Never Knew).

"Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand:
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?" (The Second Coming)

- Literary work should be heretical, ie. refusing to accept reality at face value and always posing those two "final, most terrifying, most fearless" questions: Why? And what lies ahead?

- Further, only heretical form can dramatize heretical ideas

"There were two in paradise and the choice was offered to them: happiness without freedom, or freedom without happiness. No other choice. Tertium non datur. They, fools that they were, chose freedom. Naturally, for centuries afterward they longed for fetters, for the fetters of yore. This was the meaning of their world weariness, Weltschmerz. For centuries! And only we found a way to regain happiness. . . . No, listen, follow me! The ancient god and we, side by side at the same table! Yes, we helped god to defeat the devil definitely and finally. It was he, the devil, who led people to transgression, to taste pernicious freedom�he, the cunning serpent. And we came along, planted a boot on his head, and . . . squash! Done with him! Paradise again! We returned to the simple-mindedness and innocence of Adam and Eve. No more meddling with good and evil and all that; everything was simple again, heavenly, childishly simple. The Well-Doer, the Machine, the Cube, the giant Gas Bell, the Guardians�all these are good. All this is magnificent, beautiful, noble, lofty, crystalline, pure. For all this preserves our non-freedom, that is, our happiness. In our place the ancients would indulge in discussions, deliberations, etc. They would break their heads trying to make out what was moral or unmoral" (59).

"Man is like a novel: up to the last page one does not know what the end will be. It would not be worth reading otherwise" (151).

"There are two forces in the world, entropy and energy. One leads to blessed quietude, to happy equilibrium, the other to the destruction of equilibrium, to torturingly perpetual motion" (153-54).

"Desires are tortures, aren�t they? It is clear, therefore, that happiness is when there are no longer any desires, not a single desire any more. What an error, what an absurd prejudice it was, that we used to mark happiness with the sign �plus�! No, absolute happiness must be marked �minus��divine minus! . . . Minus 273o�exactly! A somewhat cool temperature. But doesn�t it prove we are at the summit?" (171).

"I ask: what was it that man from his diaper age dreamed of, tormented himself for, prayed for? He longed for that day when someone would tell him what happiness is, and then chain him to it. What else are we doing now? The ancient dream about paradise . . . Remember: there in paradise they know no desires any more, no pity, no love; there they are all�blessed" (200).

wrote an allegedly factual story of a Lourdes pilgrim and falsified the documented record (Buckley 153).

"Faith has the genius of transforming the barely possible into actuality... The unoccupied fields of the world await those who are willing to be lonely for the sake of Christ... He came and His welcome was derision, His life suffering, and His throne the Cross. As He came, so we must go. We must follow in His footprints...[Some had] this passion to call that country their home which was most in need of the gospel. In this passion all other passions died; before this vision all other visions faded; this call drowned all other voices... The open door beacons; the closed door challenges him who has a right to enter... There are hundreds of Christian college men who expect to spend life in practicing law or in some trade for a livelihood... They are making a living; they might be making a life."