"We are travellers…not yet in our native land" – St. Augustine
To sceptics who objected, “How can a woman give birth to God?”, Proclus responded:
“I am not telling you that a woman could give birth to God, but that the incarnate God could have been borne by a woman. For to God all things are possible”
Proclus of Constantinople (AD 446)
It is easy.. to understand why protest becomes a distinctive moral feature of the modern age and why indignation is a predominant modern emotion… The self-assertive shrillness of protest arises because the facts of incommensurability ensure that protestors can never win an argument; the indignant self-righteousness of protest arises because the facts of incommensurability ensure equally that the protestors can never lose an argument either. Hence the utterance of protest is characteristically addressed to those who already share the protestors’ premises. The effects of incommensurability ensure that protestors rarely have anyone else to talk to but themselves. This is not to say that protest cannot be effective; it is to say that it cannot be rationally effective and that its dominant modes of expression give evidence of a certain perhaps unconscious awareness of this
Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue
Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.
John Lennon
“The Disciples had seen the strong hands of God twist the crown of thorns into a crown of glory, and in hands as strong as that they knew themselves safe”
Dorothy Sayers
“Nothing was certain, but everything was safe – that was part of the mystery of Love.”
Charles Williams, The Greater Trumps
An hour’s conversation on literature between two ardent minds with a common devotion to a neglected poet is a miraculous road to intimacy
Charles Williams, War in Heaven
“True understanding is unattainable without both love and detachment”
Owen Barfield, History in English Words