quotes.mattlaff.com
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"Compromise is not a sign of the collapse of one’s moral conscience. It is a sign of its strength, for there is nothing more necessary to a moral conscience than the recognition that other people have one, too. A compromise is a knot tied tight between competing decencies.”
"I think a church can be clear and articulate and confident about what it believes and what its theological beliefs are, but I think to be of Christ is to be generous in how that's applied to people that don't agree."
"The essential problem of ongoingness is that one must contemplate time as that very time, that very subject of one’s contemplation, disappears."
"The experiences that demanded I yield control to a force greater than my will — diagnoses, deaths, unbreakable vows — weren’t the beginnings or the ends of anything. They were the moments when I was forced to admit that beginnings and ends are illusory. That history doesn’t begin or end, but it continues. For just a moment, with great effort, I could imagine my will as a force that would not disappear but redistribute when I died, and that all life contained the same force, and that I needn’t worry about my impending death because the great responsibility of my life was to contain the force for a while and then relinquish it."
"Hell is where no one has anything in common with anybody else except the fact that they all hate one another and cannot get away from one another and from themselves."
"This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal. I know the world is bruised and bleeding, and though it is important not to ignore its pain, it is also critical to refuse to succumb to its malevolence. Like failure, chaos contains information that can lead to knowledge--even wisdom. Like art."
"The ugly fact is books are made out of books."
"A selfish love of ourselves makes us incapable of loving others."
"Time is eternity begun."
"You're not supposed to be so blind with patriotism that you can't face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who says it."
“The greatest need of our time is to clean out the enormous mass of mental and emotional rubbish that clutters our minds and makes of all political and social life a mass illness. Without this housecleaning we cannot begin to see. Unless we see we cannot think.”
And if by prayer
Incessant I could hope to change the will
Of Him who all things can, I would not cease
To weary Him with my assiduous cries.
(Paradise Lost, Book XI, line 307)
Incessant I could hope to change the will
Of Him who all things can, I would not cease
To weary Him with my assiduous cries.
(Paradise Lost, Book XI, line 307)
If everyone were clothed with integrity,
If every heart were just, frank, kindly,
The other virtues would be well-nigh useless,
Since their chief purpose is to make us bear with patience
The injustice of our fellows.
If every heart were just, frank, kindly,
The other virtues would be well-nigh useless,
Since their chief purpose is to make us bear with patience
The injustice of our fellows.
"Failing is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough."
"Forgive him who wrongs you; join him who cuts you off; do good to him who does evil to you; and speak the truth even if it be against yourself."
"Christianity is Christ living in us."
"The gate of heaven is everywhere."
"Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. That is not our business and, in fact, it is nobody's business. What we are asked to do is to love, and this love itself will render both ourselves and our neighbors worthy if anything can."
"To say that I am made in the image of God is to say that Love is the reason for my existence, for God is love. Love is my true identity. Selflessness is my true self. Love is my true character. Love is my name."
"When religion is good, it invites you to contemplation, inspiration, and social action. When religion is bad, it makes you say, 'We're the good guys, and they are the bad guys, and we must win at all costs.'"