The least strength suffices to break what is bruised.

Now as of old the gods give men all good things, excepting only those that are baneful and injurious and useless. These, now as of old, are not gifts of the gods: men stumble into them themselves because of their own blindness and folly.

I long to believe in immortality. . . . If I am destined to be happy with you here--how short is the longest life. I wish to believe in immortality--I wish to live with you forever.

Feast of Clare of Assisi, Founder of the Order of Minoresses (Poor Clares), 1253 Commemoration of John Henry Newman, Priest, Teacher, Tractarian, 1890 In the first ages, [catechizing] was a work of long time; months, sometimes years, were devoted to the arduous task of disabusing the mind of the incipient Christian of its pagan errors, and of moulding it upon the Christian faith. The Scriptures indeed were at hand for the study of those who could avail themselves of them, but St. Iranaeus does not hesitate to speak of whole races who had been converted to Christianity, without being able to read them. To be unable to read or write was in those times no evidence of want of learning; the hermits of the deserts were, in one sense of the word, illiterate, yet the great St. Anthony, though he knew not letters, was a match in disputation for the learned philosophers who came to try him. ... John Henry Newman, "What is a University?" August 12, 2000 Any single verse of the Bible, taken in isolation, may actually be dangerous to your spiritual health. Every part of it must be read in relation to the whole message.

He was a burning and shining light: and ye were willing for a season to rejoice in his light.

Life has a practice of living you, if you don't live it.

Things won are done, joy's soul lies in the doing.

He has the right to criticize who has the heart to help.

Ancient of days! august Athena! where, Where are thy men of might? thy grand in soul? Gone--glimmering through the dream of things that were; First in the race that led to glory's goal, They won, and pass'd away--Is this the whole?

Take man's most fantastic invention- God. Man invents God in the image of his longings, in the image of what he wants to be, then proceeds to imitate that image, vie with it, and strive to overcome it.

Power always has to be kept in check; power exercised in secret, especially under the cloak of national security, is doubly dangerous.

Manners are a sensitive awareness of the feelings of others. If you have that awareness, you have good manners, no matter what fork you use.

Once we realize that imperfect understanding is the human condition, there is no shame in being wrong, only in failing to correct our mistakes. -George Soros.

He who would see old Hoghton right Must view it by the pale moonlight.

For the theatre one needs long arms, it is better to have them too long than too short. An artiste with short arms can never, never make a fine gesture.

Of all the thirty-six alternatives, running away is best.

A fire-mist and a planet, A crystal and a cell, A jellyfish and a saurian, And caves where the cavemen dwell; Then a sense of law and beauty, And a face turned from the clod-- Some call it Evolution, And others call it God.

A synonym is a word you use when you can't spell the word you first thought of.

I am become death, shatterer of worlds.

The vote means nothing to women. We should be armed. -Edna O'Brien.