"[Abortion] Has Sown Violence..."

“America needs no words from me to see how your decision in Roe v. Wade has deformed a great nation. The so-called right to abortion has pitted mothers against their children and women against men. It has sown violence and discord at the heart of the most intimate human relationships. It has aggravated the derogation of the father’s role in an increasingly fatherless society. It has portrayed the greatest of gifts—a child—as a competitor, an intrusion, and an inconvenience. It has nominally accorded mothers unfettered dominion over the independent lives of their physically dependent sons and daughters.”
- Mother Teresa, found here.

“The Future is More Beautiful..."

“The future is more beautiful than all the pasts.”
- Teilhard de Chardin (Letter, 5 September 1919, Making of a Mind, p.306)

The Soil of Home is Deep...

"It is best to love first what you are fitted to love, I suppose; you must start somewhere and have some roots, and the soil of [home] is deep."
- J.R.R. Tolkein, through Sam in The Return of the King, Houghton Mifflin (March 1988), p. 144.

"The Death of Democracy..."

"The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be the slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment [of the mind]."
- Robert M. Hutchins

A Christmas Hymn...

A stable lamp is lighted
Whose glow shall wake the sky;
The stars shall bend their voices,
And every stone shall cry
And every stone shall cry,
And straw like gold shall shine;
A barn shall harbor heaven,
A stall become a shrine…
- Richard Wilbur, Collected Poems, 1943-2004

J.R.R. Tolkien on Marriage and Love...

"Nearly all marriages, even happy ones, are mistakes: in the sense that almost certainly (in a more perfect world, or even with a little more care in this very imperfect one) both partners might be found more suitable mates. But the real soul-mate is the one you are actually married to."
- J.R.R. Tolkien in a letter to Michael Tolkien (March 1941)

Psalmody...

“Psalmody is a weapon”
– John Climacus (monk and hermit)

"I Was Created in You Mother..."

"Yes. It is true. I was created in you mother ... It is also true that you were created for me. I own your voice. It was shaped and tuned to soothe me. Your arms were molded into a cradle to hold me, to rock me. The scent of your body was the air perfumed for me to breathe."
- Maya Angelou, reading from her book Mother: A Cradle to Hold Me in an ABC interview on May 11, 2006.

Happy Reformation Day...!

Happy Reformation Day! Today, enjoy a little of the humorous and the serious Luther with these two quotes:

“Who loves not wine, women and song, Remains a fool his whole life long”

"I am to cling to Christ alone; He has taught neither too much nor too little. He has taught me to know God the Father, has revealed Himself to me, and has also acquainted me with the Holy Spirit. He has also taught me how to live and how to die and has told me what to hope for. What more do I want?"
- Martin Luther

Democracy...

"The real reason for democracy is just the reverse [of what is normally thought]. Mankind is so fallen that no man can be trusted with unchecked power over his fellows. Aristotle said that some people were only fit to be slaves. I do not contradict him. But I reject slavery because I see no men fit to be masters."
- C.S. Lewis, Present Concerns, Fount Paperbacks (London), 1986, p.17

Bonhoeffer on Abortion...

"Destruction of the embryo in the mother’s womb is a violation of the right to live which God has bestowed upon this nascent life. To raise the question of whether we are here concerned already with a human being or not is merely to confuse the issue. The simple fact is that God certainly intended to create a human being and that this nascent human being has been deliberately deprived of its life. And that is nothing but murder ... A great many motives may lead to an action of this kind; indeed in cases where it is an act of despair, performed in circumstances of extreme human or economic destitution and misery, the guilt may often lie rather with the community than with the individual. Precisely in this connection money may conceal many a wanton deed, while the poor man’s more reluctant lapse may far more easily be disclosed. All these considerations must no doubt have a quite decisive influence on our personal and pastoral attitude towards the person concerned, but they cannot in any way alter the fact of murder."
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics, p. 174.

Truth...

"Truth not only points out the way along which human life ought to mave, but reveals also the only way along which it can move."
- Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God is Within You, p. 323

Hope...

"Hope is an instinct only the reasoning human mind can kill. An animal never knows despair."
- Graham Greene through the words of the nameless "whiskey priest" in The Power and the Glory, p.141

To Be Happy, Be...

"If you want to be happy, be."
- Leo Tolstoy as quoted in Wisdom for the Soul : Five Millennia of Prescriptions for Spiritual Healing (2006) by Larry Chang, p. 352

There is Value in Place...

"Any prospect of awakening or coming to life to a dead man makes indifferent all times and places. The place where that may occur is always the same, and indescribably pleasant to all our senses. For the most part we allow only outlying and transient circumstances to make our occasions. They are, in fact, the cause of our distraction. Nearest to all things is that power which fashions their being. Next to us the grandest laws are continually being executed. Next to us is not the workman whom we have hired, with whom we love so well to talk, but the workman whose work we are."
- Henry David Thoreau, from Chapter 5 of Walden

E.B. White on Television...

"Television ... will insist that we forget the primary...in favor of the secondary and the remote."

"Television will enormously enlarge the eye's range, and, like radio, will advertise the Elsewhere. Together with the tabs, the mags, and the movies, it will insist that we forget the primary and the near in favor of the secondary and the remote."

"I believe television is going to be the test of the modern world, and that in this new opportunity to see beyond the range of our vision we shall discover either a new and unbearable disturbance of the general peace or a saving radiance in the sky. We shall stand or fall by television — of that I am quite sure."
- E.B. White

"Since [Every Man's] Body is Doomed to Die..."

"Since [every man's] body is doomed to die, his task on earth evidently must be of a more spiritual nature. It cannot unrestrained enjoyment of everyday life. It cannot be the search for the best ways to obtain material goods and then cheerfully get the most out of them. It has to be the fulfillment of a permanent, earnest duty so that one's life journey may become an experience of moral growth, so that one may leave life a better human being than one started it."
- Alexander Solzhenitsyn in his Harvard Commencement Address (1978) entitled A World Split Apart

"The Years Teach Much..."

The years teach much which the days never knew.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

'He Hated and Loved It ... He Had No Will Left..."

'All the "great secrets" under the mountains had turned out to be just empty night: there was nothing more to find out, nothing worth doing, only nasty furtive eating and resentful remembering. He was altogether wretched. He hated the dark, and he hated light more: he hated everything, and the Ring most of all.'

'What do you mean?' said Frodo. 'Surley the Ring was his precious and the only thing he cared for? But if he hated it, why didn't he get rid of it, or go away and leave it?'

'You ought to begin to understand Frodo, after all you have heard,' said Gandalf. 'He hated it and loved it, as he hated and loved himself. He could not get rid of it. He had no will left in the matter.'
- J.R.R. Tolkien through the conversation between Gandalf and Frodo in The Fellowship of the Rings, p.64

Happiness Grow Under Our Feet...

"The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance; the wise grows it under his feet."
- James Oppenheim

Enough is Enough...

"A man's life is enough [for his own happiness]."
- Marcus Aurelius

"Reliev[ing] the High Schools of Their Duty..."

"If the universities teach high school courses because the students are not prepared for university courses, then they simply relieve the high schools of their duty and in the process make themselves unable to do their own duty."
— Wendell Berry, “The Loss of the University” in Home Economics (1986), p. 88.

(ht: Fire and Knowledge)

The Most Concernign Thing: Beauty...

"(Beauty) is what we are more concerned with than anything else."
- Jonathan Edwards as quoted by John Navone in Enjoying God's Beauty

Love is Manifest in the Routine...

"Human love is sanctified not in the height of attraction and enthusiasm but in the everyday struggles of liveing with another person. It is not in romance but in the routine that the possibilites for transformation are made manifest."
- Kathleen Norris, The Quotidian Mysteries, p.63

"It is Never Sufficient Simply to Have Read God’s Word..."

"Therefore, it is never sufficient simply to have read God’s Word. It must penetrate deep within us, dwell in us, like the Holy of Holies in the Sanctuary, so that we do not sin in thought, word or deed."
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Meditating on the Word, (Nashville: Cowley Publications, 1986), 127-128.

Jesus' Suffering from the Father...

"In an excess of zeal Peter tries to turn [Jesus] aside from His purpose of submitting to His passion and prevent the soldiers from laying their hands on Him. But Jesus said to him: 'Shall I not drink the cup that the Father has given me?' In fact, He attributed the suffering and ignominy of His passion not to the Jews who accused Him, not to Judas who betrayed Him, nor to Pilate who condemned Him, nor to the soldiers who ill-treated and crucified Him, nor to the devil who incited them all, though they were the immediate causes of His sufferings, but to God, and to God not considered as a strict judge but as a loving and beloved Father."
- Fr. J.B. Saint Jure in Trustful Surrender to Divine Providence

"The Fundamental Cause of Trouble..."

"The fundamental cause of trouble in the world today is that the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt."
– Bertrand Russell

Pieper on Chesterton and "Earthly Contemplation"...

"G.K. Chesterton, considering his life in retrospect, said that he had always had the almost mystical conviction of the miracle in all that exists, and of the rapture dwelling essentially within all experience. Within that statement lie three separate assertations: that everything holds and conceals at bottom a mark of its divine origin; that one who catches a glimpse of it 'sees' that this and all things are 'good' geyond all comprehension; and that seeing this, he is happy. Here in sum is the whole doctrine of the contemplation of earthly creation."
- Josef Pieper, Happiness and Contemplation, St. Augustine's Press (South Bend), 1998, p. 88

The Awe of Astronomy...

"Many a man, brought up in the glib professional of some shallow form of Christianity, who comes through reading Astronomy to realise for the first time how majestically indifferent most reality is to man, and who perhaps abandons his religion on that account, may at that moment be having his first genuinely religious experience."
– C. S. Lewis, Miracles (1947, revised in 1960), p. 81.

(ht: Fire & Knowledge)

God and Happiness...

"God and happiness are the same."
- St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentes, I., p.101

The Spirit of Openness...

"Life comes to us whole. It is only the analytic lens we impose that makes it seem as if problems can be isolated and solved. When we forget that it is “only a lens,” we lose the spirit of openness."
– Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization (1990), p. 283

The Power of Pleasure and Pain...

"When by sensations of delight or pain;
That any of our faculties hath seized,
Entire the soul collects herself, it seems
She is intent upon that power alone..."
- Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, Purgatory,
Canto IV, lines 1-4

The Problem of Pain...

"Pain, the blessed means of God, is man's abhorrence and perplexity. All along the history of the world the Sufferer has been the astonishment and stumbling-block of humanity. The barbarian gets rid of him; he is the first difficulty with which every literature wrestles; to the end he remain the problem of philosophy and the sore test of faith."
- George Adam Smith, The Book of Isaiah, vol. 2, 1897, p. 347

"Art is Dead"...

"The search in modern life is for utility; the endeavor is to improve existence materially. Every day, science invents new processes for the feeding, clothing, or transportation of man; she manufactures cheaply inferior products in order to give adulterated luxuries to the greatest number -though it is true that she has also made real improvements in all that ministers to our daily wants. But it is no longer a question of spirit, of thought, of dreams. Art is dead."
- Auguste Rodin, Art, Boston: Small, Maynard and Co., 1912, p. 7

"A Corporation"...

"A corporation, essentially, is a pile of money to which a number of persons have sold their moral allegiance."
– Wendell Berry, “The Total Economy” in Citizenship Papers (2003), p. 69

How Masterpieces Come...

"Masterpieces are not single and solitary births; they are the outcome of many years of thinking by the body of the people, so that the experience of the mass is behind the single voice."
- Virginia Woolf