"Begin by looking at everything from the moral point of view, and you will end by believing in God." Thomas Arnold, famous headmaster of Rugby school and father of Matthew Arnold, quoted in Gertrude Himmelfarb The De-moralization of Society
"If [his recently deceased wife Joy] 'is not,' then she never was. I mistook a cloud of atoms for a person. There aren’t, and never were, any people. Death only reveals the vacuity that was always there. What we call the living are simply those who have not yet been unmasked. All equally bankrupt, but some not yet declared. But this must be nonsense; vacuity revealed to whom? Bankruptcy declared to whom? To other boxes of fireworks or clouds of atoms. I will never believe – more strictly, I can’t believe – that one set of physical events could be, or make, a mistake about other sets. No, my real fear is not of materialism. If it were true, we – or what we mistake for 'we' – could get out, get from under the harrow. An overdose of sleeping pills would do it. I am more afraid that we are really rats in a trap. Or, worse still, rats in a laboratory. Someone said, I believe, 'God always geometrizes.' Supposing the truth were 'God always vivisects'?" C.S. Lewis A Grief Observed
"As knowledge increases, wonder deepens." Charles Morgan, quoted as "Thought du jour" in "Social Studies" in Globe and Mail April 24, 2013
"Was Kierkegaard right when he said that all despair about earthly things is actually – and without us necessarily being aware of this – despair about the Eternal?" Leszek Kolakowski in First Things June-July 2003
"If you cannot mould yourself as you would wish, how can you expect other people to be entirely to your liking?" Thomas à Kempis, quoted as "Thought du jour" in Globe and Mail October 21, 2002
"What has happened, can happen." Aristotle, quoted by Conor Cruise O’Brien in The Siege (with specific reference to the Holocaust)
"It is the duty of every man to render to the Creator such homage, and such only, as he believes to be acceptable to him. This duty is precedent both in order of time and degree of obligation, to the claims of Civil Society. Before any man can be considered as a member of Civil Society, he must be considered as a subject of the Governor of the Universe." James Madison, "A Memorial and Remonstrance, 1785" according to The Federalist Patriot Founders' Quote Daily November 22, 2005 (from Federalist.com)