[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.

[trisham]

Well done!

[mlizzy]

Thanks for the great quotes. Inspiring ...

[Desdemona]

One of My favorites:

"Honey, if it's happening, it's God's will." ~ Mother Angelica

[mlizzy]

"Honey, if it's happening, it's God's will." ~ Mother Angelica

*smiles*

[kalee]

We do not want merely to see beauty, though, God knows, even that is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words-to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it... CS Lewis

[johngrace]

HOW TRUE!

[johngrace]

Prayer reveals to souls the vanity of earthly goods and pleasures. It fills them with light, strength and consolation; and gives them a foretaste of the calm bliss of our heavenly home. -- St. Rose of Viterbo

We must pray without tiring, for the salvation of mankind does not depend on material success; nor on sciences that cloud the intellect. Neither does it depend on arms and human industries, but on Jesus alone. -- St. Frances Xavier Cabrini

[johngrace]

“You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you odd.” (Flannery O’Connor was so right.)

[Mrs. Don-o]

Long applause for Flanner O'Connor, and for Lewis and Chesterton. But --- lest this turn into an O'Connor-Lewis-ChestertonFest (always a danger because they're so eye-poppingly good)--- I have to put in some of my other favorites.

---

"A comprehended god is no god."

"Slander is worse than cannibalism."

"The floor of hell is paved with the skulls of bishops."

Those are all from St. John Chrysostom, Bishop

---

Oh, OK. I can't resist s couple more from Flannery O'Connor. From "A Good Man in Hard to Find"

"She would of been a good woman," The Misfit said, "if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life."

(This is one of my husband's favorites, too).

On the Holy Eucharist:

"If it's just a symbol, to hell with it."

[mlizzy]

"She would of been a good woman," The Misfit said, "if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life."

*Roaring* One of my favorites too, Mrs. Don-o! I may have given you this link before (my apologies if so), but here is a paper Tom wrote on Flannery: "The Fight to be “Flannery”: A Good (Catholic) Woman (Writer) is Hard to Find."

[Mrs. Don-o]

“She didn't think she could be a saint, but maybe a martyr if they killed her quick.”

Flannery O'Connor

[mlizzy]

“She didn't think she could be a saint, but maybe a martyr if they killed her quick.” --Flannery O'Connor

ROFL

[Salvation]

"I've noticed that everybody that is for abortion

has already been born."

~Ronald Reagan, quoted in New York Times, 22 September 1980