Can Not Quotes (page 168)
I have not much patience with a certain class of Christians nowadays who will hear anybody preach so long as they can say, 'He is very clever, a fine preacher, a man of genius, a born orator.' Is cleverness to make false doctrine palatable? Why, sirs, to me the ability of a man who preaches error is my sorrow rather than my admiration.
Charles Spurgeon
Perhaps the sexual life is the great test. If we can survive it with charity to those we love and with affection to those we have betrayed, we needn't worry so much about the good and the bad in us. But jealousy, distrust, cruelty, revenge, recrimination ... then we fail. The wrong is in that failure even if we are the victims and not the executioners. Virtue is no excuse.
Graham Greene
you may fume and fidget as you please: but this is the best plan to pursue with you, I am certain. I like you
more than I can say; but I’ll not sink into a bathos of sentiment: and with this needle of repartee I’ll keep you
from the edge of the gulf too; and, moreover, maintain by its pungent aid that distance between you and myself most conducive to our real mutual advantage.
Charlotte Bronte
Night falls. Or has fallen. Why is it that night falls, instead of rising, like the dawn? Yet if you look east, at sunset, you can see night rising, not falling; darkness lifting into the sky, up from the horizon, like a black sun behind cloud cover. Like smoke from an unseen fire, a line of fire just below the horizon, brushfire or a burning city. Maybe night falls because it’s heavy, a thick curtain pulled up over the eyes. Wool blanket.
Margaret Atwood