The Quote Thread.

[Hitch-22]

"If it's one thing I can't stand, it's people groveling."

-God

[Splendour]

"Most ignorance is vincible ignorance.We don’t know because we don’t want to know. It is our will that decides how and upon what subjects we shall use our intelligence. Those who detect no meaning in the world generally do so because, for one reason or another, it suits their books that the world should be meaningless." Aldous Huxley

[Splendour]

“There are ultimately only two alternatives in the intellectual life: either one conforms desire to the truth or one conforms truth to desire. These two positions represent opposite poles between which a continuum of almost infinite gradations exist.” E. Michael Jones

[Splendour]

Nobody ever says, "I think I will lie to myself today." This is the double treachery of self-deception: First we deceive ourselves, and then we convince ourselves that we are not deceiving ourselves. - Lewis Smedes

[Splendour]

Thomas Nagel:

“I want atheism to be true. . . . It isn’t just that I don’t believe in God, and, naturally, hope that I’m right about my belief. It’s that I hope there is no God! I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that.”

[Splendour]

"My chief reason for choosing Christianity was because the mysteries were incomprehensible. What's the point of revelation if we could figure it out ourselves? If it were wholly comprehensible, then it would just be another philosophy." Mortimer Adler

[Splendour]

"I suggest that many elements of our mind/body matrix are means by which God is trying to get our attention, but we have not had much practice reflecting on them. We, like George, often don't focus on our feelings, memories, what our bodies are telling us, or the depth and meaning of narratives. The more we pay attention to these things - what our brains are telling us - the more we are ultimately paying attention to God."

Curt Thompson, M.D., Anatomy of the Soul

[Splendour]

"I suggest that those who organized the canon of Scripture knew what they were doing when they placed the psalms in the center of the Bible. From the perspective of neuroscience, this book is in the perfect symbolic position, pointing to the full integration of the mind as we bring together both language (left hemisphere) and emotional states (right hemisphere) in the beauty of poetry."

Curt Thompson, M.D., Anatomy of the Soul

[Splendour]

The Hound of Heaven
by
Francis Thompson (1859-1907)

I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.
Up vistaed hopes I sped;
And shot, precipitated,
Adown Titanic glooms of chasmed fears,
From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.
But with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbèd pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
They beat--and a Voice beat
More instant than the Feet--
"All things betray thee, who betrayest Me."

I pleaded, outlaw-wise,
By many a hearted casement, curtained red,
Trellised with intertwining charities
(For, though I knew His love Who followed,
Yet was I sore adread
Lest having Him, I must have naught beside);
But if one little casement parted wide,
The gust of His approach would clash it to.
Fear wist not to evade, as Love wist to pursue.
Across the margent of the world I fled,
And troubled the gold gateways of the stars,
Smiting for shelter on their clanged bars;
Fretted to dulcet jars
And silvern chatter the pale ports o' the moon.
I said to dawn, Be sudden; to eve, Be soon;
With thy young skyey blossoms heap me over
From this tremendous Lover!
Float thy vague veil about me, lest He see!
I tempted all His servitors, but to find
My own betrayal in their constancy,
In faith to Him their fickleness to me,
Their traitorous trueness, and their loyal deceit.
To all swift things for swiftness did I sue;
Clung to the whistling mane of every wind.
But whether they swept, smoothly fleet,
The long savannahs of the blue;
Or whether, Thunder-driven,
They clanged his chariot 'thwart a heaven
Plashy with flying lightnings round the spurn o' their feet--
Fear wist not to evade as Love wist to pursue.
Still with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbèd pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
Came on the following Feet,
And a Voice above their beat--
"Naught shelters thee, who wilt not shelter Me."

I sought no more that after which I strayed
In face of man or maid;
But still within the little children's eyes
Seems something, something that replies;
They at least are for me, surely for me!
I turned me to them very wistfully;
But, just as their young eyes grew sudden fair
With dawning answers there,
Their angel plucked them from me by the hair.
"Come then, ye other children, Nature's--share
With me," said I, "your delicate fellowship;
Let me greet you lip to lip,
Let me twine with you caresses,
Wantoning
With our Lady-Mother's vagrant tresses'
Banqueting
With her in her wind-walled palace,
Underneath her azured daïs,
Quaffing, as your taintless way is,
From a chalice
Lucent-weeping out of the dayspring."
So it was done;
I in their delicate fellowship was one--
Drew the bolt of Nature's secrecies.
I knew all the swift importings
On the wilful face of skies;
I knew how the clouds arise
Spumèd of the wild sea-snortings;
All that's born or dies
Rose and drooped with--made them shapers
Of mine own moods, or wailful or divine--
With them joyed and was bereaven.
I was heavy with the even,
When she lit her glimmering tapers
Round the day's dead sanctities.
I laughed in the morning's eyes.
I triumphed and I saddened with all weather,
Heaven and I wept together,
And its sweet tears were salt with mortal mine;
Against the red throb of its sunset-heart
I laid my own to beat,
And share commingling heat;
But not by that, by that, was eased my human smart.
In vain my tears were wet on Heaven's gray cheek.
For ah! we know not what each other says,
These things and I; in sound I speak--
Their sound is but their stir, they speak by silences.
Nature, poor stepdame, cannot slake my drouth;
Let her, if she would owe me,
Drop yon blue bosom-veil of sky, and show me
The breasts of her tenderness;
Never did any milk of hers once bless
My thirsting mouth.
Nigh and nigh draws the chase,
With unperturbèd pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy;
And past those noisèd Feet
A voice comes yet more fleet--
"Lo naught contents thee, who content'st not Me."

Naked I wait Thy love's uplifted stroke!
My harness piece by piece Thou hast hewn from me,
And smitten me to my knee;
I am defenseless utterly.
I slept, methinks, and woke,
And, slowly gazing, find me stripped in sleep.
In the rash lustihead of my young powers,
I shook the pillaring hours
And pulled my life upon me; grimed with smears,
I stand amid the dust o' the mounded years--
My mangled youth lies dead beneath the heap.
My days have crackled and gone up in smoke,
Have puffed and burst as sun-starts on a stream.
Yea, faileth now even dream
The dreamer, and the lute the lutanist;
Even the linked fantasies, in whose blossomy twist
I swung the earth a trinket at my wrist,
Are yielding; cords of all too weak account
For earth with heavy griefs so overplussed.
Ah! is Thy love indeed
A weed, albeit amaranthine weed,
Suffering no flowers except its own to mount?
Ah! must--
Designer infinite!--
Ah! must Thou char the wood ere Thou canst limn with it?
My freshness spent its wavering shower i' the dust;
And now my heart is a broken fount,
Wherein tear-drippings stagnate, spilt down ever
From the dank thoughts that shiver
Upon the sighful branches of my mind.
Such is; what is to be?
The pulp so bitter, how shall taste the rind?
I dimly guess what Time in mist confounds;
Yet ever and anon a trumpet sounds
From the hid battlements of Eternity;
Those shaken mists a space unsettle, then
Round the half-glimpsed turrets slowly wash again.
But not ere him who summoneth
I first have seen, enwound
With blooming robes, purpureal, cypress-crowned;
His name I know, and what his trumpet saith.
Whether man's heart or life it be which yields
Thee harvest, must Thy harvest fields
Be dunged with rotten death?

Now of that long pursuit
Comes on at hand the bruit;
That Voice is round me like a bursting sea:
"And is thy earth so marred,
Shattered in shard on shard?
Lo, all things fly thee, for thou fliest Me!
Strange, piteous, futile thing,
Wherefore should any set thee love apart?
Seeing none but I makes much of naught," He said,
"And human love needs human meriting,
How hast thou merited--
Of all man's clotted clay rhe dingiest clot?
Alack, thou knowest not
How little worthy of any love thou art!
Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee
Save Me, save only Me?
All which I took from thee I did but take,
Not for thy harms.
But just that thou might'st seek it in my arms.
All which thy child's mistake
Fancies as lost, I have stored for the at home;
Rise, clasp My hand, and come!"

Halts by me that footfall;
Is my gloom, after all,
Shade of His hand, outstreched caressingly?
"Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest,
I am He Whom thou seekest!
Thou dravest love from thee, who dravest Me."

[Splendour]

Quote from Clay Jones:

"After all, a toddler, in comparison to Einstein, knows infinitely more about nuclear physics than the smartest among us, in comparison to the OMNISCIENT ONE, knows about the universe. And although that toddler may one day grow to understand even more than Einstein did, no finite being will ever make the jump to all-knowing."

From: Ehrman’s Problem 17: Humility Is Absent Without Leave
http://www.clayjones.net/2012/08/ehr...8Clay+Jones%29

[MinRaze]

Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.
-James Joyce

[asdfasdf32]

Originally Posted by MinRaze

Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.
-James Joyce

I might be wrong, but I think that's Groucho Marx.

[Splendour]

William Lecky:

"Christianity for the first time made charity a rudimentary virtue, giving it a leading place in the moral type, and in the exhortation of its teachers. Besides its general influence in stimulating the affections, it effected a complete revolution in this sphere, by regarding the poor as the special representatives of the Christian Founder, and thus making the love of Christ, rather than the love of man the principle of charity . . . . . A vast organization of charity, presided over by bishops, and actively directed by the deacons, soon ramified over Christendom, till the bond of charity became the bond of unity, and the most distant sections of the Christian Church corresponded by the interchange of mercy" (History of European Morals, II, 3rd ed., 79, 80).


Another quote on the lack of charity in the ancient world:

"The charitable achievements of the non-Christian religions have exhibited all the limitations of their defective first principles. Among the Greeks and the romans the human person had no inherent worth. He was of importance only as a citizen. The majority of the subjects of these two great powers, being slaves, were without any legal rights. The poor, whether slaves or freemen, were treated by even the noblest and wisest of the Greeks and romans with contempt or at most with pity which is akin to contempt. Owing to its doctrine that the emotions should be suppressed and that pain should be borne with indifference, Stoicism had the practical effect of discouraging sympathy with, or charity towards, the unfortunate and the indigent. Human wretchedness was regarded as a minor evil or as no evil at all. Gifts to beggars were few, and usually from motives entirely selfish. Although the assertion is sometimes made that Athens and Rome possessed hospitals, the weight of evidence seems to show conclusively that no public institution for the regular treatment of diseases existed anywhere before the coming of Christ. The rich citizens of Rome annually distributed large sums of money among their clients and dependents, and the Government regularly provided for the needs of thousands upon thousands, but neither of these practices was intended to benefit any of the poor who were not citizens. The dominant motive of both was political — to secure the goodwill and civic influence of the crowd. In Athens the subventions of public money to the poorer artisans were similarly restricted and directed to the same ends."

From Charity and Charities of the Catholic Encyclopedia
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03592a.htm

[Splendour]

'In my most extreme fluctuations I have never been an atheist in the sense of denying the existence of God."
Charles Darwin

Darwin, Francis, The Life of Charles Darwin. London: Tiger Books,1995, 55.

[zumby]

Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.

I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created parasitic wasps with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars.

It appears to me (whether rightly or wrongly) that direct arguments against christianity and theism produce hardly any effect on the public; and freedom of thought is best promoted by the gradual illumination of men's minds which follows from the advance of science.

Man in his arrogance considers himself a great work; worthy the interposition of a deity. More humble and I believe truer to consider him created from animals

Charles Darwin