Quotes

The progress of science is strewn, like an ancient desert trail, with the bleached skeleton of discarded theories which once seemed to possess eternal life.

No matter how counter-intuitive it may seem, basic research has proven over and over to be the lifeline of practical advances in medicine.

If we are to survive, we must have ideas, vision, and courage. These things are rarely produced by committees. Everything that matters in our intellectual and moral life begins with an individual confronting his own mind and conscience in a room by himself.

The Incarnation is the medicine of the soul, undoing the Fall and bringing man to the Tree of Life, and the office of a priest is to administer this medicine in the sacraments.

We are to introduce our people into the life of the Church, which is salvation, that they may grasp its meaning, its contents and purpose, to taste and see how good the Lord is.

The task of a priest, in some respects, may be different today, but the principles upon which Herbert built his life as a priest are of universal application.

The priest is Christ's slave, and Christ himself took the form of a slave and became obedient to death. So the priest in serving human needs lives a Godward life, possessed by God and witnessing that only when lives are utterly possessed by God do they find their true freedom.

The theater is so endlessly fascinating because it's so accidental. It's so much like life.

What is the most innocent place in any country? Is it not the insane asylum? These people drift through life truly innocent, unable to see into themselves at all.

The closer a man approaches tragedy the more intense is his concentration of emotion upon the fixed point of his commitment, which is to say the closer he approaches what in life we call fanaticism.

I'm the end of the line; absurd and appalling as it may seem, serious New York theater has died in my lifetime.

Certainly the most diverse, if minor, pastime of literary life is the game of Find the Author.

We are the first generation of human beings to have substantial insights into the origin of our cosmos and of human life in it.

For many decades now - and certainly during my adult life in academe - the Western intellectual world has not been convinced that theology is a pursuit that can be engaged in with intellectual honesty and integrity.

Fiction is able to do one thing better than any other art form: it is able to convey a convincing sense of what is going on in someone else's head. To me, that is the great mystery of life: what is everyone else thinking?

Will you tell me, 'Oh, painting is a special art, whereas anyone can write prose passably well'? Can he, indeed? ... Can you, sir? Nay, believe me, you are either an archangel or a very bourgeois gentleman indeed if you admit to having spoken English prose all your life without knowing it.

Life is the farce which everyone has to perform.

Idle youth, enslaved to everything; by being too sensitive I have wasted my life.

I saw that all beings are fated to happiness: action is not life, but a way of wasting some force, an enervation. Morality is the weakness of the brain.

I have found that if you love life, life will love you back.

Even when I'm sick and depressed, I love life.

To be alive, to be able to see, to walk, to have houses, music, paintings - it's all a miracle. I have adopted the technique of living life miracle to miracle.

Life is the game that must be played, this truth at least, good friends, we know; so live and laugh, nor be dismayed as one by one the phantoms go.

I'm passionately involved in life: I love its change, its color, its movement. To be alive, to be able to see, to walk, to have houses, music, paintings - it's all a miracle.

Each day is a little life: every waking and rising a little birth, every fresh morning a little youth, every going to rest and sleep a little death.