Great Throughts Treasury

"Praying is identifying oneself with the divine Will by the studied renunciation of one’s own, not by curbing one’s desire but by acquiescing in a stronger will."

"The order is the pleasure of reason, but the disorder is the delight of the imagination."

"Truth has nothing to do with the number of people it convinces."

"It is fortunate that diplomats have long noses since they usually cannot see beyond them."

"All that passes is raised to the dignity of expression; all that happens is raised to the dignity of meaning. Everything is either symbol or parable"

"Intelligence is nothing without delight."

"We must not seek happiness in peace, but in conflict."

"You explain nothing, O poet, but thanks to you all things become explicable."

"How amazing it is to be alive. Anyone who lives and breathes and puts both feet on the ground. What possible reason could he have for envying the gods?"

"Things: all things consume it; love alone makes use of it."

"A cocktail is to a glass of wine as rape is to love."

"Doctor, do you think it could have been the sausage? [last words]"

"But how can I explain that without the Church I cannot be fully myself, that I cannot fully realize my soul, that I cannot be fully the thing God loves, the thing I have been created in my own way to signify, that without her I cannot fully realize, beneath the species of my personality, the Bride he asks for?"

"Either the Bible is a human work, in which messianic texts are inserted somehow like raisins in a plum cake ... Or Scripture is a divine work, the inspirer of which is the Holy Spirit, who completely penetrates it in all its parts?"

"Art imitates nature not in its effects as such, but in its causes, in its ?manner,? in its process, which are nothing but a participation in and a derivation of actual objects, of the Art of God himself."

"Eighty years old! No eyes left, no ears, no teeth, no legs, no wind! And when all is said and done, how astonishingly well one does without them."

"Far from pretending to any authority for this book, I disclaim it with all the sincerity and energy at my command; my scientific and theological knowledge would not Justify such a claim. This is no commentary. It is a poem, It is an earthly poet's look ? he looks with ardent interest ? at a poem whose author is said to be the Holy Spirit."

"In the little moment that remains to us between the crisis and the catastrophe, we may as well drink a glass of champagne."

"For things and for poems, there is but one way of being new, and that is to be true; there is only one way of being young, and that is to be eternal."

"I have finished with literature in the strict sense.... I have now given up all fictional expression, and I kneel in ceaselessly growing bedazzlement at the Sacred Books."

"It is she who at its end dominates, fills, the whole of the Old Testament and opens the New. She is the Ark of the Covenant who appears in the middle of the Apocalypse. It is she who, identified with the Church, does not cease to fight against the Two Beasts, representing political and intellectual opposition.... It is she who descends to earth as betrothed, before going back to Heaven as Bride."

"Order is the pleasure of the reason; but disorder is the delight of the imagination."

"Redemption was not accomplished in the imagination, but in time and in factual reality. From the creation of the world, it was prepared for by a series of historical events, related in a body of chronicles whose truthfulness we cannot place in doubt without damaging our patrimony and harming our own foundations. "Remember the days of old", says Deuteronomy (32. 7) .... Likewise, the Gospel is above all the account of the actions and deeds of the God-Man."

"Whatever these men may be as Biblical critics, I distrust them as critics. They seem to me to lack literary judgment, to be imperceptive about the very quality of the texts they are reading."

"The Bible has an architecture. It is not a mass of ill-assorted materials, for the reader to sort out as best he can. It is a wonderful building, whose maker is the Holy Spirit. In the course of time he laid down a plan and its execution through all kinds of inspired workers. The object of poetry is not, as is so often said, dreams, illusions or ideas. It is that holy reality, given once for all, at the center of which we are placed... A true poet has no need of larger stars or lovelier roses. The one that is there suffices him, and he knows that his own life is too short for the lesson she gives and the approval she deserves. He knows that the works of God are very good, and he asks for none other."

"The error of the whole mythical school, Strauss's school. is to think that, because a fact is rich in teaching and meaning, it is a fictional product of the human mind. ["

"There is something sadder to lose than life ? the reason for living; sadder than to lose one's possessions is to lose one's hope."