The only way to avoid being unhappy is to close yourself up in Art and to count for nothing all the rest.

I mean, I went to a Catholic boys' school for a year, but that was to play hockey. Religion class was quite contentious for me.

Keanu Reeves

I was much distressed by next door people who had twin babies and played the violin but one of the twins died, and the other has eaten the fiddle, so all is peace.

Edward Lear

You must realize that it is the ordinary way of God's dealings with us that our ideas do not work out speedily and efficiently as we would like them to. The reason for this is not only the loving wisdom of God, but also the fact that our acts have to fit into a great complex pattern that we cannot possibly understand. I have learned over the years that Providence is always a whole lot wiser than any of us, and that there are always not only good reasons, but the very best reasons for the delays and blocks that often seem to us so frustrating and absurd.

Thomas Merton, The Hidden Ground

Humankind spends so much time admiring and ritualizing the inventions of humankind! And yet humankind is such a tiny part of all there is. -- Nigel S. Hey, Wonderment(Matador, 2012)

Nigel Hey

The real security of Christianity is to be found in its benevolent morality, in its exquisite adaptation to the human heart, in the facility with which its scheme accommodates itself to the capacity of every human intellect, in the consolation which it bears to the house of mourning, in the light with which it brightens the great mystery of the grave.

Thomas Babington Macaulay

The rule of joy and the law of duty seem to me all one.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

New roads; new ruts.

G. K. Chesterton

The earth reflects the sky and the sky meets the earth and, every now and then, if we're lucky, we have a moment to see how small we are.

Ally Condie

What is a democrat? One who believes that the republicans have ruined the country. What is a republican? One who believes that the democrats would ruin the country.

Ambrose Bierce

Human history in essence is the history of ideas.

H. G. Wells

The Family is the Country of the heart. There is an angel in the Family who, by the mysterious influence of grace, of sweetness, and of love, renders the fulfillment of duties less wearisome, sorrows less bitter. The only pure joys unmixed with sadness which it is given to man to taste upon earth are, thanks to this angel, the joys of the Family.

Giuseppe Mazzini

The thing is, I don't believe in most of what's done. The amount of financial and imaginative energy that's put into mediocrity is just amazing which I find to be fundamentally offensive as a human being.

William Hurt