“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.
“‘I’m never an optimist, but I’m always hopeful.’”
Tom Flanagan in British Columbia Report May 27, 2002 (specifically regarding the then-current Canadian political scene but I commend this attitude in almost all situations)
"There is an alliance between religion and real fun, of which the modern thinkers have never got the key.”
G.K. Chesterton in Illustrated London News Jan. 11, 1908, quoted in Gilbert! magazine Vol. 6 #3 (Dec. 2002)
“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
“Simplicity is not so simple as it looks.”
G.K. Chesterton in “The Return of the Gods” in The Resurrection of Rome quoted in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 9 #6