I believe that theology is facing the abyss. I must face the abyss, the abyss of existence, the abyss of mystery. (Rubem Alves, p. 189)
When you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.
You've gotta dive into the abyss if you wanna get anything good. Every record, you've gotta go down in the abyss and hope that you come out of it alive.
Man looks in the abyss, there's nothing staring back at him. At that moment, man finds his character. And that is what keeps him out of the abyss.
Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.
Secret 02.02. By skillfully employing peripheral vision, it's actually possible to gaze into an abyss without the abyss gazing into you.
A child's fear is a world whose dark corners are quite unknown to grownup people; it has its sky and its abysses, a sky without stars, abysses into which no light can ever penetrate.
The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche once wrote that when you look into the darkness of the abyss the abyss looks into you. Probably no other line or thought more inspires or informs my work.
The person who fights monsters should make sure that in the process, he does not become a monster himself. Because when you stare down at an abyss, the abyss stares back at you.
Lou Mannheim: Man looks in the abyss, there's nothing staring back at him. At that moment, man finds his character. And that is what keeps him out of the abyss.
To really know who you are, your core self, you need to know who you are pretending to be and who you are not, and the way to heal is the same way to grow in awareness.
He hadn't "abused" alcohol, but had spent almost four years sitting in a chair drinking jug wine around the clock and looking, variously, at the wall, the window blind, and the TV screen.
There is now the capacity to make tyranny total in America. Only law ensures that we never fall into that abyss—the abyss from which there is no return.
It is the absoluteness of meaninglessness that Christianity, as I understand it, inhabits and inflects, the shock and stark violence of the cross that discloses the living Christ. Revelation, like creation, arises not merely out of nothingness but by...
Father lied. The knowledge tasted bitter on her tongue. She folded the orb into a scarf she’d brought. It didn’t conceal its light, but it was better than carrying the orb through the halls exposed.
I honestly don’t know whether I am describing something essential about the way we know God or merely my own weakness of mind.
Lou Mannheim: Bud... Bud I like you. Just remember something. Man looks in the abyss, there's nothing staring back at him. At that moment man finds his character. And that is what keeps him out of the abyss. Bud Fox: I think I understand.
What we call doubt is often simply dullness of mind and spirit, not the absence of faith at all, but faith latent with the lives we are not quite living, God dormant in the world to which we are not quite giving our best selves.
Herein lies the great difference between divine weakness and human weakness, the wounds of Christ and the wounds of man. Two human weaknesses only intensify each other. But human weakness plus Christ's weakness equals a supernatural strength.
The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness. Although the two are identical twins, man, as a rule, views the prenatal abyss with more calm than the one...
Dorian sat quietly for a moment and then said, “We all straddle the abyss, Penny. If you never look down, how will you ever know who you are or what you will become? Your dad could never be ashamed of you, because falling in that abyss is part of t...
