For Life and Death

It is far easier to say 'for ever and ever', standing as you think you do now on the brink of eternity, than to say 'till death do us part', looking down a long and weary road of toil and sickness and poverty and change and little vexations. You do not only take this woman, young and blooming, but old and sick and withered and wearied, perhaps. Do you take her for any lot?

—Edward Eggleston, The End of the World: A Love Story.

Immortal Authors

It is a good thing that the invisible world is so thoroughly shut out from this. Clairvoyance and spirit-tapping would be great evils to the world, if it were not that the spirits even of the ablest men, in losing their bodies seem also to lose their wits. It is well that it is so, for if Washington Irving dictated to a medium accounts of the other world in such a style as that of his "Little Britain", for instance, we should lose all interest in the affairs of this sphere, and nobody would buy our novels.

—Edward Eggleston, The End of the World: A Love Story.

What is Man?

Man has always been his own most vexing problem. How shall he think of himself? If man insists that he is a child of nature and that he ought not to pretend to be more than the animal, he tacitly admits that he is, at any rate, a curious kind of animal who has both the inclination and the capacity to make such pretensions. If on the other hand he insists upon his unique and distinctive place in nature and points to his rational faculties as proof of his special eminence, there is usually an anxious note in his avowals of uniqueness which betrays his unconscious sense of kinship with the brutes.

—Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man, Chapter 1.

Build Me No Monument

Build me no monument
Lest my memory be perverted to the uses
Of lying and oppression.
My lovers and their children must not be dispossessed of me;
I would be the untarnished possession forever
Of those for whom I lived.

—Edgar Lee Masters, Spoon River Anthology, Herman Altman.

Unreal City

Under the brown flog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.
Sighs, short and frequent, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.

—T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land.

NYC Impatience

He who hurries his feet sins.

—Proverbs 19:2b.

Wait, and hope.

Pray for a man, who like Satan thought himself for an instant equal to God, but who now acknowledges with Christian humility that God alone possesses supreme power and infinite wisdom. Perhaps those prayers may soften the remorse he feels in his heart.

For there is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state with another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness. We must have felt what it is to die, that we may appreciate the enjoyments of living.

Live, then, and be happy, beloved children of my heart, and never forget that until the day when God shall deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is summed up in these two words,—Wait, and hope.

—Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Christo

Crowns to be Won

What is there do do? what is left to be done?
Is there no enduring crown to be won?

—T.S. Eliot, Murder in the Cathedral.

Cycles

We do not know very much of the future except that from generation to generation the same things happen again and again. Men learn little from others' experiences. But in the life of one man never does the same time return.

—T.S. Eliot, Murder in the Cathedral.

A Prologue to Love

It is not possible for us to know each other except as we manifest ourselves in distorted shadows to the eyes of others. We do not even know ourselves; therefore, how can we judge a neighbor? Who knows what pain is behind virtue and what fear behind vice? No one, in short, knows what makes a man, and only God knows his thoughts, his joys, his bitternesses, his agony; the injustices committed against him and the injustices he commits.... God is too inscrutable for our little understanding. After sad meditation it comes to me that all our life, whether good or ill, mournful or joyous, obscure or illustrious, painful or happy, is only a prologue to love beyond the grave, where all is understood and all forgiven.

—Attributed to Seneca the Younger by Taylor Caldwell in A Prologue to Love.

Remembering

You'll soon be a father. I hope you'll love your son or daughter very much. I won't ask you to try to make the child happy, for happiness is something that doesn't really exist, except for a flash of it occasionally. But if you love your child he will remember it all his life, and life won't ever be too hard to endure when he remembers.

—Taylor Caldwell, A Prologue to Love, p553.

A Lying Coward

"No, no, it doesn't matter. Nothing ever matters, not truly. Except if someone loves you. No one ever did." She coughed deeply, rackingly, but held to her tighter than before, and the palms of her hands were cold and wet.

"I'm sorry I came. Forgive me. I've upset you."

"No, it was waiting for me, all of it. It isn't your fault. No, it was my fault, lying to myself ever since I can remember. Lying. A lying coward."

—Taylor Caldwell, A Prologue to Love, p487.

Cannibals

I don't know why it is, but every one of us tries to eat others alive, in more ways than one. The human race is very terrible.

—Taylor Caldwell, A Prologue to Love, p489.

Dedication

To all
Who despise hypocrisy and deception
Who admire manly courage and womanly devotion
Whose hearts yet vibrate to the chords of romance
And who respect simple faith in and gratitude to God
This book is respectfully dedicated
by the author.

—Charles Clark Munn, Rockhaven

Through a Glass—Darkly

Too often a community will play down the moral question if the sin is large—and profitable—enough, but a small sin is never let to die. Maybe it's because so few of us have the capacity to sin in the grand manner, but we all can sin sordidly. And we can't forgive people for being as weak as we ourselves are.

—Zenna Henderson, Through a Glass—Darkly.

Blindness

When I consider how my light is spent
Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,
And that one Talent which is death to hide
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest He returning chide,
"Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?"
I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, "God doth not need
Either man's work or his own gifts. Who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
Is kingly: thousands at his bidding speed,
And post o'er land and ocean without rest;
They also serve who only stand and wait.

—John Milton, Sonnet 26: On His Blindness, 1673.

On the Church Militant (or Visible)

The state of the church has always been such that some were called the people and saints of God who were not so, while others, who were among them as a remnant, were the people and saints of God, but were not so called. However, Christ has preserved His church, though not so as to be called the church.

I do not say this because I deny that those whom you cite are the saints and church of God, but because it cannot be proved that they really are saints, should anyone deny it. I call them saints, and so regard them; I call them the church, and so judge them—but by the rule of charity, not by the rule of faith. By which I mean that charity, which always thinks the best of everyone, and is not suspicious, but believes and assumes all good of its neighbour, calls every baptized person a saint. There is no danger involved if she is wrong; it is the way of charity to be deceived, for she is open to all the uses and abuses of every man, as being handmaid of all, good and bad, believing and unbelieving, true and false. Faith, however, calls none a saint but him who is proclaimed such by divine sentence, for the way of faith is not to be deceived.

—Martin Luther, The Bondage of the Will, p121-122.

"Doing"

Weary, working, burdened one,
Wherefore toil you so?
Cease your doing; all was done
Long, long ago.

Cast your deadly "doing" down—
Down at Jesus’ feet;
Stand in Him, in Him alone,
Gloriously complete.

—James Proctor

A Woman’s Question

Before I trust my fate to thee,
  Or place my hand in thine,
Before I let thy future give
  Color and form to mine,
Before I peril all for thee,
question thy soul to-night for me.

I break all slighter bonds, nor feel
  A shadow of regret:
Is there one link within the Past
  That holds thy spirit yet?
Or is thy faith as clear and free
as that which I can pledge to thee?

Does there within thy dimmest dreams
  A possible future shine,
Wherein thy life could henceforth breathe,
  Untouch’d, unshar’d by mine?
If so, at any pain or cost,
O, tell me before all is lost.

Look deeper still. If thou canst feel,
  Within thy inmost soul,
That thou hast kept a portion back,
  While I have stak’d the whole;
Let no false pity spare the blow,
but in true mercy tell me so.

Is there within thy heart a need
  That mine cannot fulfil?
One chord that any other hand
  Could better wake or still?
Speak now—lest at some future day
my whole life wither and decay.

Lives there within thy nature hid
  The demon-spirit Change,
Shedding a passing glory still
  On all things new and strange?
It may not be thy fault alone—
but shield my heart against thy own.

Couldst thou withdraw thy hand one day
  And answer to my claim,
That Fate, and that to-day’s mistake—
  Not thou—had been to blame?
Some soothe their conscience thus;
but thou wilt surely warn and save me now.

Nay, answer not,—I dare not hear,
  The words would come too late;
Yet I would spare thee all remorse,
  So, comfort thee, my fate—
Whatever on my heart may fall—
remember, I would risk it all!

—Adelaide Anne Procter

Fallen

If any of those that are converted in infancy should be called to be ministers, they would be under great disadvantage in dealing with those that are in a natural condition, and in teaching others the difference between a converted and an unconverted state, for they would not know by experience.

—Jonathan Edwards, Miscellany No. 816

Someone

True love can be whispered from heart to heart
When lovers are parted they say
But I must depend on a wish and a star
As long as my heart doesn't know who you are.
Sweet dreams be yours dear, if dreams there be
Sweet dreams to carry you close to me.
I wish they may and I wish they might
Now goodnight, my someone, goodnight.

—The Music Man, Goodnight My Someone.

Ulysses

But it's no use, says he. Force, hatred, history, all that. That's not life for men and women, insult and hatred. And everybody knows that it's the very opposite of that that is really life.
—What? says Alf.
—Love, says Bloom. I mean the opposite of hatred. I must go now.

—James Joyce, Ulysses, ch 12.


Beneficent Disseminator of blessings to all Thy creatures, how great and universal must be that sweetest of Thy tyrannies which can hold in thrall the free and the bond, the simple swain and the polished coxcomb, the lover in the heyday of reckless passion and the husband of maturer years. But how mingled and imperfect are all our sublunary joys.

—James Joyce, Ulysses, ch 14.

Dying

When we finally fail in trying,
We will find success in dying,
Have you died that you might live in Christ anew?

http://abigailmiller.com/html/have-you-died.html
http://media.sermonindex.net/16/SID16876.mp3

Good Reading

Good reading, though it is not essentially an affectional or moral or intellectual activity, has something in common with all three.... The primary impulse of each individual is to maintain and aggrandise himself. The secondary impulse is to escape from the self, to correct its provincialism and heal its loneliness.... In love, in virtue, in the pursuit of knowledge, and in the reception of the arts, we are doing this. Obviously this process can be described either as an enlargement or as a temporary annihilation of the self. But that is an old paradox; 'he that loseth his life shall save it'.
...
Those of us who have been true readers all our life seldom fully realise the enormous exten­sion of our being which we owe to authors. We realise it best when we talk with an unliterary friend. He may be full of goodness and good sense but he inhabits a tiny world. In it, we should be suffocated. The man who is contented to be only himself—and therefore less a self—is in prison.
...

Literary experience heals the wound, without undermining the privilege, of individuality. There are mass emotions which heal the wound; but they destroy the privilege. In them our separate selves are pooled and we sink back into sub-individuality. But in reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like the night sky in the Greek poem, I see with a myriad eyes, but it is still I who see. Here, as in worship, love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself; and am never more myself than when I do.

—C.S. Lewis, An Experiment in Criticism, Epilogue.

The Screwtape Letters

Ideally, Screwtape’s advice to Wormwood should have been balanced by archangelical advice to the patient’s guardian angel. Without this the picture of human life is lopsided. But who could supply the deficiency? Even if a man—and he would have to be a far better man than I—could scale the spiritual heights required, what ‘answerable style’ could he use? For the style would really be part of the content. Mere advice would be no good; every sentence would have to smell of Heaven.

—C.S. Lewis, Second Preface to The Screwtape Letters.

Diaries

If Theism had done nothing else for me, I should still be thankful that it cured me of the time-wasting and foolish practice of keeping a diary. (Even for autobiographical purposes a diary is nothing like so useful as I had hoped. You put down each day what you think important; by of course you cannot each day see what will prove to have been important in the long run.)

—C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy.

Recompense

Roger repaired to London again, and came to the maid that lent him the money to pay his master withal, and said unto her, "Elizabeth, here is thy money I borrowed of thee; and for the friendship, good will, and the good counsel I have received at thy hands, to recompense thee I am not able, otherwise than to make thee my wife." And soon after they were married, which was in the first year of Queen Mary.

—Foxe's Book of Martyrs, The Story of Roger Holland.

Mutual Necrophilia

Easy money
Lying on a bed
Just as well they never see
The hate that's in your head
Don't they know they're making love
To one already dead!

—Les Misérables, Lovely Ladies


He does not know that the dead are there;
That her guests are in the depths of Sheol.

—Proverbs 9:18

Living the Dream

We now settled into a routine which has ever since served in my mind as an archetype, for if I could please myself I would always life as I lived there. I would choose always to breakfast at exactly eight and to be at my desk by nine, there to read or write till one. If a cup of good tea of coffee could be brought me about eleven, so much the better. At one precisely lunch should be on the table; and by two at the latest I would be on the road. Not, except at rare intervals, with a friend. Walking and talking are two very great pleasures, but it is a mistake to combine them. Our own noise blots out the sounds and silences of the outdoor world. Our own noise blots out the sounds and silences of the outdoor world; and talking leads almost inevitably to smoking, and then farewell to nature as far as one [three?] of our senses is concerned. The only friend to walk with is one who so exactly shares your taste for each mood of the countryside that a glance, a halt, or at most a nudge, is enough to assure us that the pleasure is shared. The return from the walk, and the arrival of tea, should be exactly coincident, and not later than a quarter past four. Tea should be taken in solitude, for eating and reading are two pleasures that combine admirably. Or course not all books are suitable for mealtime reading. It would be a kind of blasphemy to read poetry at table. At five a man should be at work again, and at it till seven. Then, at the evening meal and after, comes the time for talk, and unless you are making a night of it with your cronies (and I had none) there is no reason why you should ever be in bed later than eleven. But when is a man to write his letters? You forget that I am describing the ideal life I would live now if I could. And it is an essential of the happy life that a man would have almost no mail and never dread the postman’s knock. Such is my ideal of "settled, calm, Epicurean life." It is no doubt for my own good that I have been so generally prevented from leading it, for it is a life almost entirely selfish. Selfish, not self-centered.

—C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy, Chapter 9.

Two Worlds

Those who have dwelt in the Blessed Realm live at once in both worlds, and against the Seen and Unseen they have great power.

—J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, Book 2 Chapter 1.

The Weight of Words

Avoid the talk of men. For words are mischievous, light, and easily raised, but hard to bear and difficult to be rid of. Words never wholly die away when many people voice them: indeed, words are in some ways even divine.

—Hesiod, Works and Days, l. 760-762.

Romance

Perhaps, after all, romance did not come into one’s life with pomp and blare, like a gay knight riding down; perhaps it crept to one’s side like an old friend through quiet ways; perhaps it revealed itself in seeming prose, until some sudden shaft of illumination flung athwart its pages betrayed the rhythm and the music; perhaps . . . perhaps . . . love unfolded naturally out of a beautiful friendship, as a golden-hearted rose slipping from its green sheath.

—L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Avonlea, A Wedding at the Stone House.

Married Folks

You married men—there's many in my view—
Don't think your wife can all wrap up in you,
Don't deem, though close her life to yours may grow,
That you are all the folks she wants to know;
Or think your stitches form the only part
Of the crochet-work of a woman's heart.
Though married souls each other's lives may burnish,
Each needs some help the other cannot furnish.
...
'Twas hard to see her give her life to mine,
Making a steady effort not to pine;
'Twas hard to hear that laugh bloom out each minute,
And recognize the seeds of sorrow in it.

—Will Carleton, Farm Festivals, The First Settler's Story.

Unperfected

When I bethink me on that speech whileare
Of Mutability, and well it weigh:
Me seems, that though she all unworthy were
Of the Heav'ns rule, yet very sooth to say,
In all things else she bears the greatest sway.
Which makes me loathe this state of life so tickle,
And love of things so vaine to cast away;
Whose flow'ring pride, so fading and so fickle,
Short Time shall soon cut down with his consuming sickle.

Then gin I think on that which Nature said,
Of that same time when no more Change shall be,
But steadfast rest of all things, firmly stayed
Upon the pillars of Eternity,
That is contrar to Mutabilitie:
For all that moveth doth in Change delight:
But thence-forth all shall rest eternally
With Him that is the God of Sabbaoth hight:
O thou great Sabbaoth God, grant me that Sabaoth's sight.

—Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queen, Mutabilitie VIII.

Falling

So oft as I with state of present time,
The image of the antique world compare,
When as mans age was in his freshest prime,
And the first blossom of fair virtue bare,
Such odds I finde twixt those, and these which are,
As that, through long continuance of his course,
Me seemes the world is run quite out of square,
From the first point of his appointed source,
And being once amiss growes daily worse and worse.

—Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queen, V. Proem 1.

Teach Me

Spirit of God, descend upon my heart;
Wean it from earth, through all its pulses move;
Stoop to my weakness, mighty as Thou art,
And make me love Thee as I ought to love.

I ask no dream, no prophet ecstasies,
No sudden rending of the veil of clay,
No angel visitant, no opening skies;
But take the dimness of my soul away.

Hast Thou not bid us love Thee, God and King?
All, all Thine own - soul, heart, and strength and mind.
I see Thy cross - there teach my heart to cling.
Oh, let me seek Thee, and, oh, let me find.

Teach me to feel that Thou art always nigh;
Teach me the struggles of the soul to bear,
To check the rising doubt, the rebel sign;
Teach me the patience of unanswered prayer.

Teach me to love Thee, as Thine angels love
One holy passion filling all my frame;
The baptism of the heaven descended Dove;
My heart an altar, and Thy love the flame.

— George Croly, via Mary's Musings.

Pearls

16/12/55
It is a dreadful truth that the state of having to depend solely on God is what we all dread most.

28 March 1961
Humans are very seldom either totally sincere or totally hypocritical. Their moods change, their motives are mixed, and they are often themselves quite mistaken as to what their motives are.

8 Nov 62
The truth is that the only alternatives are either solitude (with all its miseries and dangers, both moral and physical) or else all the rubs and frustrations of a joint life. The second, even at its worst seems to me far the better.

—C.S. Lewis, Letters to an American Lady.

Real Happiness?

Only the happiness that is snatched from suffering is real; all the rest is merely what they call 'creature comforts'.

—Thornton Wilder, Theophilus North, Mino, quoting Austrian poet Grillparzer?

Hell

Hell is they.

—Thornton Wilder, Theophilus North, Alice.

Hell is oneself.

—T.S. Eliot, The Cocktail Party.

Constellations

A man should have three masculine friends older than himself, three of about his own age, and three younger. And he should have three older women friends, three of his own age, and three younger. These twice-nine friends I call his Constellation.... Seldom—perhaps never—are all eighteen roles filled at the same time. Vacancies occur; some live for years—or for a lifetime—with only one older or younger friend, or with none.... But we must remember that we also play a part in the Constellations of others—which is a partial replacement in our own.

—Thornton Wilder, Theophilus North, The Deer Park, p 310.

Newspapers

I never read the papers. Why does anyone? They're nearly all lies, and one has to wade thru' such reams of verbiage and 'write up' to find out even what they're saying.

—C.S. Lewis, Letters to an American Lady, 26/10/55.

Discernment

Every child was conducting itself like forty. The consequences were uproarious beyond belief; but no one seemed to care; on the contrary, the mother and daughter laughed heartily, and enjoyed it very much; and the latter, soon beginning to mingle in the sports, got pillaged by the young brigands most ruthlessly. What would I not have given to one of them! Though I never could have been so rude, no, no! I wouldn't for the wealth of all the world have crushed that braided hair, and torn it down; and for the precious little shoe, I wouldn't have plucked it off, God bless my soul, to save my life. As to measuring her waist in sport, as they did, bold young brood, I couldn't have done it; I should have expected my arm to have grown round it for a punishment, and never come straight again. And yet I should have dearly liked, I own, to have touched her lips; to have questioned her, that she might have opened them; to have looked upon the lashes of her downcast eyes, and never raised a blush; to have let loose waves of hair, an inch of which would be a keepsake beyond price: in short, I should have liked, I do confess, to have had the lightest licence of a child, and yet to have been man enough to know its value.

—Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

As God Sees

This is one of the miracles of love: it gives to both a power of seeing through its own enchantments, and yet not being disenchanted. To see, in some measure, as God sees.

—C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed.

Thank You

What hath poor yoeman for such peril past,
Wherewith you to reward? Accept therefore
My simple self, and service evermore;
And he that high does sit, and all things see
With equal eyes, their merits to restore,
Behold what ye this day have done for me,
And what I cannot quite, requite with usury.

—Edmund Spencer, The Faerie Queen, I. VIII. 27.

When Less is More

It is the way of my people to use light words at such times and say less than they mean. We fear to say too much. It robs us of the right words when a jest is out of place.

—J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, Book I Chapter 5: The Houses of Healing.

The Bacon and Cheese Murders

Frankie the Knife tried to shake me, but I stuck to him like a mustard plaster. Frankie was hog ugly, face like a bucket of mud. Walking down Broadway, he was as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food cake. When I jumped him on Alder, the streetlight showed the vein in his forehead beating like a ragtime drummer on bathtub gin. Next thing he knew I was slapping him around like a pinball machine with body English.

—The Bacon and Cheese Murders, by Ollie Chandler, in Deception, by Randy Alcorn.

Silence

I said, "I will guard my ways
That I may not sin with my tongue;
I will guard my mouth as with a muzzle
While the wicked are in my presence."
I was mute and silent,
I refrained even from good,
And my sorrow grew worse.

My heart was hot within me,
While I was musing the fire burned;
Then I spoke with my tongue:
"LORD, make me to know my end
And what is the extent of my days;
Let me know how transient I am....

"And now, Lord, for what do I wait?
My hope is in You."

—Psalm 39:1-4,7, NASB

The Princess Bride

Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.

—Westley, in The Princess Bride, by S. Morgenstern (William Goldman).

It Helps to have a Reason

I try to give 'em a reason, you see. It helps folks if they can latch onto a reason. When I come to town, which is seldom, if I weave a little and drink out of this sack, folks can say Dolphus Raymond's in the clutches of whiskey—that's why he won't change his ways. He can't help himself, that's why he lives the way he does. It ain't honest but it's mighty helpful to folks.

—Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 20.

Fortelling

I do not foretell, for all foretelling is now vain: on the one hand lies darkness, and on the other only hope. But if hope should not fail, then I say to you, Gimli son of Glóin, that your hands shall flow with gold, and yet over you gold shall have no dominion.

—J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, Book II, Chapter 8.

Advice

Elves seldom give unguarded advice, for advice is a dangerous gift, even from the wise to the wise, and all courses may run ill. But what would you? You have not told me all concerning yourself; and how then shall I choose better than you?

—J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, Book I, Chapter 3.

Thankfulness

My God, I thank Thee who hast made
The Earth so bright;
So full of splendour and of joy,
Beauty and light;
So many glorious things are here,
Noble and right!

I thank Thee, too, that Thou hast made
Joy to abound;
So many gentle thoughts and deeds
Circling us round,
That in the darkest spot of Earth
Some love is found.

I thank Thee more that all our joy
Is touched with pain;
That shadows fall on brightest hours;
That thorns remain;
So that Earth's bliss may be our guide,
And not our chain.

For Thou who knowest, Lord, how soon
Our weak heart clings,
Hast given us joys, tender and true,
Yet all with wings,
So that we see, gleaming on high,
Diviner things!

I thank Thee, Lord, that Thou hast kept
The best in store;
We have enough, yet not too much
To long for more:
A yearning for a deeper peace,
Not known before.

I thank Thee, Lord, that here our souls,
Though amply blest,
Can never find, although they seek,
A perfect rest--
Nor ever shall, until they lean
On Jesus' breast!

—Adelaide Anne Procter

Selah

Tremble, and do not sin; Meditate in your heart upon your bed, and be still. Selah.

—Psalm 4:4 NASB

Quotes

"The first and second pages were richly, and most learnedly annotated in a neat, legible hand. There were fewer on the third; after that, for the rest of the first poem, there was nothing. Each work was in the same state: the first few pages annotated, the rest in mint condition. 'Thus far into the bowels of the land' each time, and no further."

—C.S. Lewis, On Criticism.

I often find that when I purchase a used copy of one of the great books that the previous owner has liberally underlined his favorite passages, at least for the first few pages. The frequency, however, of these markings decreases drastically during my perusal, until as I near the end of the book I receive the impression that I am the first to ever read these words. Most people, it seems, approach a classic work assuming that it is famous for the memorable lines in it, and thinking that it is their job only to find them. This impression may be reasonably received from some of the popular literature today, but it is not true of the great books.


I hope the quotes on these pages are not often 'quotable', but that instead they provide a reasonable impression of the style and ideas of the author, and an incentive to find out their meaning for yourselves the hard way—by reading the source, which I have tried always to include. Aphorisms I reserve for my Twitter page.

Folly

'Most of the people in the world are fools and the rest are in great danger of contagion.' A humorous mind enables us to accommodate ourselves to their folly—and to our own.

In a way he's right, isn't he? But there comes a moment in everybody's life when he must decide whether he'll live among human beings or not—a fool among fools or a fool alone.

—Thornton Wilder, The Matchmaker, as quoted in Thornton Wilder, Theophilus North, Myra.

The Flaming Walls of the World

A feeling of something portentous and strange in human experience had been gathering within him. He felt as though he had walked all his life in ignorance of abysses and wonders, of ambushes, of eyes watching him, of writing on clouds. It came to him that surely life is vaster, deeper, and more perilous than we think it is. He was suddenly filled with fear that he would go through life ignorant—stump ignorant—of the power of light and the powers of darkness that were engaged in some mighty conflict behind the screen of appearances—fear, fear that he would live like a slave, or like a four-footed thing with lowered head.

—Thornton Wilder, The Eighth Day, p. 427.

Wisdom

It was once said of a great man that

He looked for wisdom in the panes of his window, but found it in the pains of his heart.

Some Things

There are some things that it is better to begin than to refuse, even though the end may be dark.

—J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, III.2.

Proofs

I don’t think God has provided us with a water-tight argument [for Himself]. What God has provided you and me is a water-tight person, with no holes in Him. There is no escaping Him. Jesus Christ is the water-tight person against whom, in the end, there can be no argument.

—Dick Lucas, responding to an argumentative atheist.

The Big Story

Now, some people think the Bible is a book of rules, telling you what you should and shouldn't do. The Bible certainly does have some rules in it. They show you how life works best. But the Bible isn't mainly about you and what you should be doing. It's about God and what he has done.

Other people think the Bible is a book of heroes, showing you people you should copy. The Bible does have some heroes in it, but (as you'll soon find out) most of the people in the Bible aren't heroes at all. They make some big mistakes (sometimes on purpose), they get afraid and run away. At times, they're downright mean.

No, the Bible isn't a book of rules, or a book of heros. The Bible is most of all a Story. It's an adventure story about a young Hero who comes from a far country to win back his lost treasure. It's a love story about a brave Prince who leaves his palace, his throne-everything-to rescues the ones he loves. It's like the most wonderful of fairy tales that has come true in real life!

You see, the best thing about this Story is—it's true.

There are lots of stories in the Bible, but all the stories are telling on Big Story. The Story of how God loves his children and comes to rescue them.

It takes the whole Bible to tell this Story. And at the center of the Story, there is a baby. Every story in the Bible whispers his name. He is like the missing piece in the puzzle-the piece that makes all the other pieces fit together, and suddenly you can see a beautiful picture.

My hope and prayer for all is that we would come to a bigger, better, deeper, and brighter understanding of this remarkable Story and its infallible Hero!

—Sally Lloyd-Jones, The Jesus Storybook Bible, Introduction.

Spectators

All the springs of his life were kept oiled by a quiet humor, which sometimes broke out in playful sparkles.... He had a placid way of amusing himself with the quaint and picturesque side of life....

There are those people who possess a peculiar faculty of mingling in the affairs of this life as spectators as well as actors. It does not, of course, suppose any coldness of nature or want of human interest or sympathy—nay, it often exists most completely with people of the tenderest human feeling. It rather seems to be a kind of distinct faculty working harmoniously with all the others; but he who possesses it needs never to be at a loss for interest or amusement; he is always a spectator at a tragedy or comedy, and sees in real life a humor and a pathos beyond anything he can find shadowed in books.

—Harriet Beecher Stowe, The Pearl of Orr's Island.

Secrets

For Seneca seith: 'if so be that thou ne mayst nat thyn owene conseil hyde, how darstou prayen any oother wight thy conseil secrely to kepe?'.

As Seneca said, "If you cannot keep your own counsel, but share your secret with another, how dare you expect him to keep it better than you did?"

—Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, The Tale of Melibee §24, quoting source unknown.

The Great Lesson of Life

How many men approach the close of their days in fear and loathing, having mistook the great lesson of life - having sought to the last the way to live, but not the way to die.

—After Lucius Annaeus Seneca, On the Shortness of Life.

The Parson

Holy and virtuous he was, but then
Never contempuous of sinful men,
Never disdainful, never too proud or fine,
But was discreet in teaching and benign.
His business was to show a fair behaviour
And draw men thus to Heaven and their Saviour,
He sought no pomp or glory in his dealings,
No scrupulosity had spiced his feelings.
Christ and His twelve Apostles and their lore
He taught, but followed it himself before.

—Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, Preface, translated by Nevill Coghill.

Forget Lowriders

Upon that oother side, to speken of the horrible disordinat scantnesse of clothyng as been thise kutted sloppes, or haynselyns, that thurgh hire shortnesse ne covere nat the shameful membres of man to wikked entente. Allas! somme of hem shewen the boce of hir schap, and the horrible swollen membres, that semeth lik the maladie of hirnia, in the wrappynge of hir hoses; and eek the buttokes of hem faren as it were the hyndre part of a she ape in the fulle of the moone.

—Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, The Parson's Tale, Pride.

Most Intimate Friends

[Seek to make the great writers of history as your most intimate friends. For] no one of these will fail to have his visitor leave more happy and more devoted to himself than when he came, no one of these will allow anyone to leave him with empty hands; all mortals can meet with them by night or by day.

No one of these will force you to die, but all will teach you how to die; no one of these will wear out your years, but each will add his own years to yours; the courting of none will tax your purse, but from them you will take whatever you wish; it will be no fault of theirs if you do not draw the utmost that you can desire. What happiness, what a fair old age awaits him who has offered himself as a client to these! He will have friends from whom he may seek counsel on matters great and small.

—Lucius Annaeus Seneca, On the Shortness of Life §14-15, translated by John W. Basore.