We can reject everything else: religion, ideology, all received wisdom. But we cannot escape the necessity of love and compassion.... This, then, is my true religion, my simple faith. In this sense, there is no need for temple or church, for mosque o...
Adversity is a natural part of being human. It is the height of arrogance to prescribe a moral code or health regime or spiritual practice as an amulet to keep things from falling apart. Things do fall apart. It is in their nature to do so. When we t...
the bouquet Between me and the world you are a bay, a sail the faithful ends of a rope you are a fountain, a wind, a shrill childhood cry. Between me and the world you are a picture frame, a window a field covered in wildflowers you are a breath, a b...
1 Cor 3:15a If any man’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire. Number Five is one many deem unimportant, but the apostles and I do not. I tell you now the results of that day will last for all...
With heart at rest I climbed the citadel's Steep height, and saw the city as from a tower, Hospital, brothel, prison, and such hells, Where evil comes up softly like a flower. Thou knowest, O Satan, patron of my pain, Not for vain tears I went up at ...
What marvelous things happen when men and women walk with faith in obedience to that which is required of them! I recall reading the story of Commander William Robert Anderson, the naval officer who took the submarine Nautilus beneath the polar ice f...
There are people everywhere who form a Fourth World, or a diaspora of their own. They are the lordly ones! They come in all colors. They can be Christians or Hindus or Muslims or Jews or pagans or atheists. They can be young or old, men or women, sol...
With time and perspective we recognize that such problems in life do come for a purpose, if only to allow the one who faces such despair to be convinced that he really does need divine strength beyond himself, that she really does need the offer of h...
Casson: No wonder our people are giving up, they've lost faith! Montclair: We've failed them every single time! Col. Rodin: We won't fail them again! Casson: What can we do? We're paralyzed! Montclair: Every cop in France has memorized our faces! Inf...
Boromir: My father is a noble man, but his rule is failing, and our people lose faith. He looks to me to make things right and I would do it. I would see the glory of Gondor restored. Have you ever seen it, Aragorn? The White Tower of Ecthelion, glim...
Jorge de Burgos: Laughter is a devilish wind which deforms, uh, the lineaments of the face and makes men look like monkeys. William of Baskerville: Monkeys do not laugh. Laughter is particular to men. Jorge de Burgos: As is sin. Christ never laughed....
[Charles appears just as Raven points a gun at Trask] Raven: Get out of my head, Charles! Charles Xavier: Raven, please do not make us the enemy today. Raven: Look around you, we already are! Charles Xavier: Not all of us, Raven. All you've done so f...
[first lines and off-screen] Balthasar: [narrating, off screen] In the Year of our Lord, Judea - for nearly a century - had lain under the mastery of Rome. In the seventh year of the reign of Augustus Caesar, an imperial decree ordered every Judean e...
BOYET A mark! O, mark but that mark! A mark, says my lady! Let the mark have a prick in't, to mete at, if it may be. MARIA Wide o' the bow hand! i' faith, your hand is out. COSTARD Indeed, a' must shoot nearer, or he'll ne'er hit the clout. BOYET An ...
There are some doubters even in the western villages. One woman told me last Christmas that she did not believe either in hell or in ghosts. Hell she thought was merely an invention got up by the priest to keep people good; and ghosts would not be pe...
Are you finally admitting that you can sell a man hope? Have I at last succeeded in teaching you that?' He laughed and flicked his whip again, harder. He was in a better mood than I had seen for months. 'No, Camelot, not hope. Hope is for the weak; h...
Along the sculptures of the western wall I watched the moonlight creeping: It moved as if it hardly moved at all Inch by inch thinly peeping Round on the pious figures of freestone, brought And poised there when the Universe was wrought To serve its ...
The Hill Breathless, we flung us on the windy hill, Laughed in the sun, and kissed the lovely grass. You said, "Through glory and ecstasy we pass; Wind, sun, and earth remain, the birds sing still, When we are old, are old. . . ." "And when we die Al...
Good fiction doesn’t claim to mirror reality at all. It indicts reality by providing a paradigm of shape and order and justice—the way we all know things should be—without suggesting that’s how things really are. Good fiction is the mirage th...
Ivanov- "Up to now , all revolutions have been made by moralizing diletantes. They were always in good faith and perished because of their dilettantism. We for the first time are consequent..." "Yes," said Rubashov. "So consequent, that in the intere...
Odd, don't you think? I have seen war, and invasions and riots. I have heard of massacres and brutalities beyond imagining, and I have kept my faith in the power of civilization to bring men back from the brink. And yet one women writes a letter, and...