“Few Christian thinkers have so well understood [as Luther] the abyss of despair that is the alternative to the utterly gratuitous love of God in Christ.”
Richard John Neuhaus in First Things January 2004
“men who are called practical; and the much more practical pertinacity of the man who is called theoretical.”
G.K. Chesterton, Saint Thomas Aquinas: “The Dumb Ox”
“The most basic form of human stupidity is forgetting what we are trying to accomplish.”
Friedrich Nietzsche (https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7517225-the-most-basic-form-of-human-stupidity-is-forgetting-what) {BTW I have found this in various forms including “common” rather than “basic” - it’s apparently from Human, All Too Human but I couldn’t track down the German original]
"If the only way around distress is to stop loving, well, then, let us be men about it and settle for distress.”
Robert Capon The Supper of the Lamb (the reference is not just or even primarily to romantic love but to fondness for all good things such as food, whiskey etc.)
“Laugh, and the world laughs with you;/ Weep, and you weep alone;/ For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth,/ But has trouble enough of its own…. There is room in the halls of pleasure/ For a large and lordly train,/ But one by one we must all file on/ Through the narrow aisles of pain.”
Ella Wheeler Wilcox, “Solitude,” in William Bennett The Book of Virtues [beginning and end of the poem]
“It is certainly one of the things that we can’t not know that no one may deliberately take innocent human life. The more particular doctrine of man as the created image of God seems unknown beyond the bible’s sphere of influence; it is not one of the things we can’t not know. Some intuition of the sacredness of human life is universal nonetheless…”
J. Budziszewski What We Can’t Not Know
“Awe-full life”
Recommended, especially in old age, by Paul Pearsall in The Last Self-Help Book You’ll Ever Need: Repress your anger, think negatively, be a good blamer, & throttle your inner child.