DEATH

'When I was a young man one of my mother's friends said to me, "I have never become reconciled to her death." I thought, how strange. It doesn't seem so now. One doesn't want to become reconciled.'

William Maxwell, What there is to Say we have Said, p.402. 

LONELINESS

'There is also the matter of living alone. If you live with somebody you are saved (often by petty irritation) from having to confront despair.'

William Maxwell, What there is to Say we have Said, p.394.

FAMILY

'A family tragedy, past or present, is a magnetic field of everlasting, imploring questions.'

Eudora Welty, What there is to Say we have Said, p.361.

HUMANKIND

'After all that has so plausibly been written concerning "the innate idea of God"; after all that has been said of its being common to all men, in all ages and nations; it does not appear that man has naturally any more idea of God than any of the beasts of the field; he has no knowledge of God at all; no fear of God at all; neither is God in all his thoughts. Whatever change may afterwards be wrought (whether by the grace of God or by his own reflection, or by education), he is, by nature, a mere Atheist.'

John Wesley in Alan Jacobs, Original Sin, p.146.

EDUCATION

'...as physic may justly be called the art of restoring health, so education should be considered in no other light than as the art of recovering to man his rational perfection.'

William Law in Alan Jacobs, Original Sin, p.144.

SOCIAL ACTION & EVANGELISM

'Some men shew a love to others as to their outward man, they are liberal of their worldly substance, and often give to the poor; but have no love to, or concern for the souls of men. Others pretend a great love to men's souls, that are not compassionate and charitable towards their bodies. The making of a great show of love, pity, and distress for souls, costs 'em nothing; but in order to shew mercy to men's bodies, they must part with money out of their pockets. But a true Christian love to our brethren, extends both to their souls and bodies.'

Jonathan Edwards in Richard Lovelace, Dynamics of Spiritual Life,, p.266.

 

CHILDHOOD

'When we are green, still half-created, we believe that our dreams are rights, that the world is disposed to act in our best interests, and that failing and dying are for quitters. We live on the innocent and monstrous assurance that we alone, of all the people ever born, have a special arragement whereby we will be allowed to stay green forever.'

Tobias Wolff, This Boy's Life, p.241.

CHILDHOOD

'Knowing that everything comes to an end is a gift of experience, a consolation gift for knowing that we ourselves are coming to an end. Before we get it we live in a continuous present, and imagine the future as more of that present. Happiness is endless happiness, innocent of its own sure passing. Pain is endless pain.'

Tobias Wolff, This Boy's Life, p.194.

CHRISTIANITY AND CULTURE

'...the insistence on moral rigor can be deadening to culture, can make it like a barren soil soaked in chemical poisons, unless the moral sensibility of the church is very finely tuned. The church must discriminate only against real evil. Otherwise, it can exert a sterilizing force similar to the straits which Communist states have sometimes imposed on their artists.'

Richard Lovelace, Dynamics of Spiritual Life, p.345.

THE CHURCH

'The institutional residues of Christendom often appear to be empty fossils left by previous life, shells that were once inhabited by growing organisms but are now inert and useless. But this is a mistaken image. The best analog is perhaps a southwestern desert landscape. All around us are arroyos, the empty gullies dug by floods from the spring rains, and the great river of institutional Christianity into which they lead is now an extensive mud flat with a thin ribbon of living water wandering through the center, almost hiddden from view. But it requires only a spring for the gullies to fill again and the river to flow full to its banks, to make all things alive and even old things new.'

Richard Lovelace, Dynamics of Spiritual Life, p.336.