Jill > Jill's Quotes

“Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent”
― Victor Hugo

“There is, we are aware, a philosophy that denies the infinite. There is also a philosophy, classified as pathologic, that denies the sun; this philosophy is called blindness. To set up a theory that lacks a source of truth is an excellent example of blind assurance. And the odd part of it is the haughty air of superiority and compassion assumed toward the philosophy that sees God, by this philosophy that has to grope its way. It makes one think of a mole exclaiming, "How I pity them with their sun!" There are, we know, illustrious and powerful atheists; with them, the matter is nothing but a question of definitions, and at all events, even if they do not believe in God, they prove God, because they are great minds. We hail, in them, the philosophers, while, at the same time, inexorably disputing their philosophy.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“The life of the cenobite is a human problem. When we speak of convents, those seats of error but innocence, of mistaken views but good intentions, of ignorance but devotion, of torment but martyrdom, we must nearly always say yes or no...The monastery is a renunciation. Self-sacrifice, even when misdirected, is still self-sacrifice. To assume as duty a strict error has its peculiar grandeur.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“A working knowledge of the devil can be very well had from resisting him.”
― Flannery O'Connor, The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor

“Children know by instinct that hell is an absence of love, and they can pick out theirs without missing.”
― Flannery O'Connor, The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor

“...what they have to say about themselves makes me think that there is a lot of ill-directed good in them.”
― Flannery O'Connor, The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor

“I do not like the raw sound of the human voice in unison unless it is under the discipline of music.”
― Flannery O'Connor, The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor

“Doctors always think anybody doing something they aren't is a quack; also they think all patients are idiots.”
― Flannery O'Connor, The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor

“This is what you know about someone you have to hate: he charges you with his crime and castigates himself in you.”
― Philip Roth, The Anatomy Lesson

“It's funny, don't you think, how time seems to do a lot of things? It flies, it tells, and worst of all, it runs out.”
― Markus Zusak, Fighting Ruben Wolfe

“The question of whether there exists a Creator and Ruler of the Universe has been answered in the affirmative by some of the highest intellects that have ever existed.”
― Charles Darwin

“I cannot conceive of a great scientist without this profound faith: Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.”
― Albert Einstein

“Why do some memories live only on your tongue or in your nose? Why do others always stay in your heart?”
― Amy Tan

“It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important.”
― Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

“Nothing like the act of eating for equalizing men. Dying is nothing to it.”
― Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South

“He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality. No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him. By his love he is enabled to see the essential traits and features in the beloved person; and even more, he sees that which is potential in him, which is not yet actualized but yet ought to be actualized. Furthermore, by his love, the loving person enables the beloved person to actualize these potentialities. By making him aware of what he can be and of what he should become, he makes these potentialities come true.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“Happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“It is a peculiarity of man that he can only live by looking to the future.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“If I owned Texas and Hell, I would rent out Texas and live in Hell”
― General Philip Henry Sheridan

“The crowning experience of all, for the homecoming man, is the wonderful feeling that, after all he has suffered, there is nothing he need fear anymore—except his God.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“The fearful danger of the present time is that above the cry for authority, we forget that man stands alone before the ultimate authority, and that anyone who lays violent hands on man here, is infringing eternal laws, and taking upon himself superhuman authority, which will eventually crush him.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings.”
― Heinrich Heine

“If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“Fair is whatever God wants to do.”
― Leif Enger, Peace Like a River

“If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;!”
― Rudyard Kipling, If: A Father's Advice to His Son

“Absolute seriousness is never without a dash of humor.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“Being a Christian is less about cautiously avoiding sin than about courageously and actively doing God's will.”
― Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy

“The essence of chastity is not the suppression of lust, but the total orientation of one's life towards a goal. Without such a goal, chastity is bound to become ridiculous. Chastity is the sine qua non of lucidity and concentration.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer