[ECUMENICAL] Favorite Quotations

StudiObrien ^ | June, 2010 | Michael D. O'Brien

[mlizzy]

I've been collecting fragments from the writings and sayings of others for nearly forty years. They have always struck me as pieces of a vast mosaic that is being slowly and painstakingly assembled. As in an actual mural mosaic (Byzantine, complex, more than the sum of its parts), if one stands too close to it the image blurs. Focus on a single component and the part becomes the whole, throwing all into misinterpretation. Stand back, find proportion, locate the range of vision, and the portrait emerges. It is my hope that through the passages quoted here a portrait of humanity will emerge, and beyond it the hidden face of Christ become more visible. The following is a work in progress, to which I will be adding all sorts of fragments from time to time --Michael D. O'Brien.

One of the tendencies of our age is to use the suffering of children to discredit the goodness of God, and once you have discredited his goodness, you are done with him. The Aylmers whom Hawthorne saw as a menace have multiplied. Busy cutting down imperfection, they are making headway into the raw material of good. Ivan Karamazov cannot believe, as long as one child is in torment; Camus’ hero cannot accept the divinity of Christ, because of the massacre of the innocents. In this popular pity, we mark our gain in sensibility, and our loss in vision. If other ages felt less, they saw more, even though they saw with the blind, prophetical, unsentimental eye of acceptance, which is to say, of faith. In the absence of this faith now, we govern by tenderness. It is a tenderness which, long since cut off from the person of Christ, is wrapped in theory. When tenderness is detached from the source of tenderness, its logical outcome is terror. It ends in forced labor camps and in the fumes of the gas chamber — Flannery O'Connor.
Flannery O'Connor wrote most of her stories and both of her novels in the front parlor at Andalusia that was turned into a bedroom for her.

[mlizzy]

Please note: This is an Ecumenical thread.

[mlizzy]

Please add your favorites! :)

[johngrace]

G. K. CHESTERTON

"One of the chief uses of religion is that it makes us remember our coming from darkness, the simple fact that we are created." - The Boston Sunday Post, 1/16/21

"The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people." - ILN, 7/16/10

"If there were no God, there would be no atheists." - Where All Roads Lead, 1922

"There are those who hate Christianity and call their hatred an all-embracing love for all religions." - ILN, 1/13/06

"The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried." - Chapter 5, What's Wrong With The World, 1910

"The riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man." - Introduction to the Book of Job, 1907

[johngrace]

Do not even such things as are most bitter to the flesh, tend to awaken Christians to faith and prayer, to a sight of the emptiness of this world, and the fadingness of the best it yield? Doth not God by these things (ofttimes) call our sins to remembrance, and provoke us to amendment of life? How then can we be offended at things by which we reap so much good?.... Therefore if mine enemy hunger, let me feed him; if he thirst, let me give him drink. Now in order to do this, (1) We must see good in that, in which other men can see none. (2) We must pass by those injuries that other men would revenge. (2) We must show we have grace, and that we are made to bear what other men are not acquainted with. (4) Many of our graces are kept alive, by those very things that are the death of other men’s souls.... The devil, (they say) is good when he is pleased; but Christ and His saints, when displeased.

—John Bunyan

[Paved Paradise]

I LOVE the last lines of that quote. I have goosebumps. This is exactly what the liberal Left is about. They offer tenderness cut off from the creator of tenderness. I am terrified of this. That must make me Liberaphobe or a Progressiphobe.

[mlizzy]

I LOVE the last lines of that quote. I have goosebumps.

Me too! When I initially read this quote, I had no idea where O'Connor was going with it, and then when I got to the two last lines, just like you, goosebumps. It resonates with our current "lifeless" situation in America to a T.

[johngrace]

When I have more time I would like to read all her works. Flannery O’Connor. Also the others. Thank you for the posts. What a great website too.

[mlizzy]

"The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people." - ILN, 7/16/10

Good one, John. :)

[Salvation]

"Never apologize for the Blessed Virgin Mary!"

~~Mother Angelica

[Salvation]

Sorry, but I have to put in a political one too.

"Either you are with us

 or you are for the terrorists."
~~George W. Bush

[Salvation]

 

Pray the Rosary. 

Pray without ceasing.

[T Minus Four]

"Jesus loves me,
This I know,
For the Bible tells me so."

Unattributed

[Salvation]

I've never changed my tagline after I got this one.

("With God all things are possible." Matthew 19:26)

[Salvation]

"What you do to the unborn child, you do to Jesus."

 - Mother Teresa of Calcutta

[Salvation]

"Truth is not subject

to a majority vote."

 

 - Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI

[johngrace]

HOW ABOUT THIS!

Just as true as Today

Chapter I The Period

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way--in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only." Tale of Two Cities By Charles Dickens.

FROM THAT TO THIS

I know that all times are perilous, and that in every time serious and anxious minds, alive to the honour of God and the needs of man, are apt to consider no times so perilous as their own. At all times the enemy of souls assaults with fury the Church which is their true Mother, and at least threatens and frightens when he fails in doing mischief. And all times have their special trials which others have not. And so far I will admit that there were certain specific dangers to Christians at certain other times, which do not exist in this time. Doubtless, but still admitting this, still I think that the trials which lie before us are such as would appall and make dizzy even such courageous hearts as St. Athanasius, St. Gregory I, or St. Gregory VII. And they would confess that dark as the prospect of their own day was to them severally, ours has a darkness different in kind from any that has been before it. The special peril of the time before us is the spread of that plague of infidelity, that the Apostles and our Lord Himself have predicted as the worst calamity of the last times of the Church. And at least a shadow, a typical image of the last times is coming over the world.

— Venerable John Henry Newman (1801-1890), cardinal, October 2, 1873 sermon, “The Infidelity of the Future”

[trisham]

The quote from Flannery O'Connor gave me goosebumps. I'm forwarding the link for this article to Mr. trisham.

Thanks, mlizzy!

[mlizzy]

The quote from Flannery O'Connor gave me goosebumps. I'm forwarding the link for this article to Mr. trisham. Thanks, mlizzy!

Certainly, you're welcome! Hoping Mr. trisham finds the quote enLightening as well ... :)

[don-o]

“If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”

Alexander Solzhenitsyn

[trisham]

I hope so too. :)