I have the conviction that excessive literary production is a social offence.

Dad, I'm in some trouble. There's been an accident and you're going to hear all sorts of things about me from now on. Terrible things.

Edward Kennedy

To pray, I think, does not mean to think about God in contrast to thinking about other things, or to spend time with God instead of spending time with other people. Rather, it means to think and live in the presence of God. As soon as we begin to divide our thoughts about God and thoughts about people and events, we remove God from our daily life and put him into a pious little niche where we can think pious thoughts and experience pious feelings. ... Although it is important and even indispensable for the spiritual life to set apart time for God and God alone, prayer can only become unceasing prayer when all our thoughts -- beautiful or ugly, high or low, proud or shameful, sorrowful or joyful -- can be thought in the presence of God. ... Thus, converting our unceasing thinking into unceasing prayer moves us from a self-centred monologue to a God-centred dialogue.

Henri Nouwen, Clowning in Rome

The final event to himself has been, that as he rose like a rocket, he fell like the stick.

Thomas Paine

The first step in a person's salvation is knowledge of their sin.

Seneca (Seneca the Elder)

God is a comedian playing to an audience that is too afraid to laugh.

Voltaire

If we knew each other's secrets, what comforts we should find.

John Churton Collins

Still round the corner there may wait, A new road or a secret gate.

J. R. R. Tolkien

It is not love that should be depicted as blind, but self-love.

Voltaire

Trust in the person's promise, who dares to refuse what they fear they cannot perform.

C. H. (Charles Haddon) Spurgeon

Let me tell you a story. The day after Columbine, I was interviewed for the Tom Brokaw news program. The reporter had been assigned a theory and was seeking sound bites to support it. Wouldn't you say, she asked, that killings like this are influenced by violent movies? No, I said, I wouldn't say that. But what about 'Basketball Diaries'? She asked. Doesn't that have a scene of a boy walking into a school with a machine gun? The obscure 1995 Leonardo Di Caprio movie did indeed have a brief fantasy scene of that nature, I said, but the movie failed at the box office, and it's unlikely the Columbine killers saw it. The reporter looked disappointed, so I offered her my theory. Events like this, I said, if they are influenced by anything, are influenced by news programs like your own. When an unbalanced kid walks into a school and starts shooting, it becomes a major media event. Cable news drops ordinary programming and goes around the clock with it. The story is assigned a logo and a theme song; These two kids were packaged as the Trench Coat Mafia. The message is clear to other disturbed kids around the country: If I shoot up my school, I can be famous. The TV will talk about nothing else but me. Experts will try to figure out what I was thinking. The kids and teachers at school will see they shouldn't have messed with me. I'll go out in a blaze of glory.

Roger Ebert

Religion is a temper, not a pursuit.

Harriet Martineau

What is your idea of earthly happiness? To be vindicated in my own lifetime.

Christopher Hitchens