“He who cannot draw on three thousand years is living from hand to mouth.”
Goethe, quoted on the flyleaf of Jostein Gaarder, Sophie’s World: A Novel About the History of Philosophy.
“The dark night of the soul was not discovered by Freud; it was at the heart of the experience of faith.”
Charles J. Sykes, A Nation of Victims: The Decay of the American Character
“‘I am not a pessimist; to perceive evil where it exists is, in my opinion, a form of optimism. – Roberto Rossellini; 1906-1977”
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/2238066-i-am-not-a-pessimist-to-perceive-evil-where-it
“If this physical world is all, then it is a closed hell in which we are confined like prisoners in chains, condemned to watch the other prisoners being slain.”
John Updike quoted in Huston Smith Why Religion Matters
“Our life is no dream, but it should and will perhaps become one.”
Novalis, quoted in George Macdonald Lilith
In my latest National Post column I say that acts of evil, including the mass shooting at two New Zealand mosques, result from deliberate cultivating of evil thoughts.
“In religion, as in war and everything else, comfort is the one thing you cannot get by looking for it. If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end: If you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth – only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin with and, in the end, despair.”
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
“We live under the shadow of a gigantic question mark. Who are we? Where do we come from? Whither are we bound?”
Hendrick Van Loon The Story of Mankind (the beginning)