Must Quotes (page 103)
There is absolutely no such thing as reading but by a candle. We have tried the affectation of a book at noon-day in gardens, and in sultry arbours, but it was labor thrown away. Those gay motes in the beam come about you, hovering and teasing, like so many coquets, that will have you all to their self, and are jealous of your abstractions. By the midnight taper, the writers digests his meditations. By the same light we must approach to their perusal, if we would catch the flame, the odour.
Charles Lamb
Evil (ignorance) is like a shadow-- it has no real substance of itsown, it is simply a lack of light. You cannot cause a shadow todisappear by trying to fight it, stamp on it, by railing against it, orany other form of emotional or physical resistance. In order to cause ashadow to disappear, you must shine light on it
Shakti Gawain
When everything is blocked off,' I was told by a dear friend who lives in Erfurt, "one must try to live in the interstices.' Apparently, the Christians of the Apocalypse, though they did not bear the sign of the beast, had discovered or created such spaces. From islands like these, true culture, Christian culture, may spread across the earth. Many people are athirst for it.
Hans Urs von Balthasar
Up to a point a man's life is shaped by environment, heredity, and movements and changes in the world about him; then there comes a time when it lies within his grasp to shape the clay of his life into the sort of thing he wishes to be. Only the weak blame parents, their race, their times, lack of good fortune, or the quirks of fate. Everyone has it within his power to say , this I am today, that I shall be tomorrow. The wish, however, must be implemented by deeds.
Louis L'Amour
You'd think a man that had waited eighty some odd years on God to come into his life, well, you'd think he'd come. If he didnt you'd still have to figure that he knew what he was doin. I don't know what other description of God you could have. So what you end up with is that those he has spoke to are the ones that must of needed it the worst. That's not a easy thing to accept.
Cormac McCarthy
Finished, it's finished, nearly finished, it must be nearly finished. Grain upon grain, one by one, and one day, suddenly, there's a heap, a little heap, the impossible heap. I can't be punished any more. I'll go now to my kitchen, ten feet by ten feet by ten feet, and wait for him to whistle me. Nice dimensions, nice proportions, I'll lean on the table, and look at the wall, and wait for him to whistle me.
Samuel Beckett
[Farmer] went to dozens of American and Canadian universities and colleges, preaching his O for the P [Preferential Option for the Poor] gospel, and to South Africa, where he debated a World Bank official at an international AIDS conference. "Africans must learn to curb their sexual appetites," the banker remarked, and Farmer replied, "I want to talk about other bankers, not the World Bankers, but bankers in general. My suspicion is they're not getting a lot of sex, because they spend a lot...
Tracy Kidder
What an unbearable creature he must have been in those days--and yet in those days he had been comparatively innocent. That was another mystery: it sometimes seemed to him that venial sins--impatience, an unimportant lie, pride, a neglected opportunity--cut you off from grace more completely than the worst sins of all. Then, in his innocence, he had felt no love for anyone; now in his corruption he had learnt.
Graham Greene