A hundredth of a second here, a hundredth of a second there--even if you put them end to end, they still only add up to one, two, ...perhaps three seconds, snatched from eternity.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
They are but beggars that can count their worth, But my true love is grown to such excess... I cannot sum up sum of half my wealth.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A person taking stock in middle age is like an artist or composer looking at an unfinished work; but whereas the composer and the ...painter can erase some of their past efforts, we cannot. We are stuck with what we have lived through. The trick is to finish it with a sense of design and a flourish rather than to patch up the holes or merely to add new patches to it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The receipt to make a speaker, and an applauded one too, is short and easy.--Take of common sense quantum sufficit, add a little a...pplication to the rules and orders of the House, throw obvious thoughts in a new light, and make up the whole with a large quantity of purity, correctness, and elegancy of style.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
For many people religion is a rigid concept, somewhat like a stone that is passed from generation to generation. We don't add to i...t, change it, or challenge it; we just pass it along. But even the most cursory study of the history of religions would undermine such a view. Religious traditions are far more like rivers than stones. Like the Ganges or the Gallatin, they are flowing or changing. Sometimes they dry up in arid land; sometimes they radically change course and move out to water new territory. All of us contribute to the river of our traditions. We do not know how we will change the river or be changed as we experience its currents.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
People who use their erudition to write for a learned minority ... don't seem to me favored by fortune but rather to be pitied for... their continuous self-torture. They add, change, remove, lay aside, take up, rephrase, show to their friends, keep for nine years and are never satisfied. And their futile reward, a word of praise from a handful of people, they win at such a cost--so many late nights, such loss of sleep, sweetest of all things, and so much sweat and anguish ... their health deteriorates, their looks are destroyed, they suffer partial or total blindness, poverty, ill-will, denial of pleasure, premature old age and early death.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Looked upon with historical objectivity, the Catholic Church as a religion has far better prospects. Consider its unified, world-w...ide papal leadership, the methods of Catholic ecclesiastic thought, and the life-pervading sanctification of existence, both in everyday life and at great moments; add the present glory of a thousand years of art, the multitude of religious activities, the impressive power of priests and religious, spiritually rooted celibates whose existence the faith consumes; top it off with Catholic piety, based on the Church but far from its violence and political cunning, and even spreading a touch of philosophy among the populace--compared with all this, Protestantism seems poor. Yet Protestantism, whatever may be held against it, has one virtue that outweighs all flaws. It is the principle of its birth: the chance of breaking through every religious phenomenon to a new original realization. In Catholic eyes, Protestantism is purely negative. It gives up tenet after tenet, ending in what must seem to a Catholic the total disappearance of all religious essentials--the God-man, the Resurrection, the personal God, the sacraments--and it pulverizes itself by endless internal schisms.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do.... They fill you with the faults they had And add some extra, just for you.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »