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’ experience.
But in the life of one man, never
The same time returns. Sever
The cord, shed the scale. Only
The fool, fixed in his folly, may think
He can turn the wheel on which he turns.
—T. S. Eliot, Murder in the Cathedral



We and God have business with each other, and in opening ourselves to his influence our deepest destiny is fulfilled. The universe … takes a turn genuinely for the worse or for the better in proportion as each one of us fulfills or evades God’s demands.
— William James



There is, fortunately, a minority composed of those who recognize early in their lives that the most beautiful and satisfying experiences open to humankind are not derived from the outside, but are bound up with the development of the individual’s own feeling, thinking, and acting. The genuine artists, investigators, and thinkers have always been persons of this kind. However inconspicuously the life of these individuals runs its course, nonetheless the fruits of their endeavors are the most valuable contributions which one generation can make to its successors.
— Albert Einstein



"The world had always loved the Saint as being the nearest possible approach to the perfection of God. Christ seems to have always loved the sinner as being the nearest possible approach to the perfection of man... The moment of repentance is the moment of initiation. More than that. It is the means by which one alters one's past. The Greeks thought that impossible. They often say in their gnomic aphorisms: 'Even the Gods cannot alter the past'. Christ showed that the commonest sinner could do it." -- Oscar Wilde, De Profundis