Francesc > Francesc's Quotes

“The young woman continued to frown, displaying her irritation. ‘You would continue on and leave one of our brethren in this manner? Unblessed and unburied?’ Her voice was sharp and angry.”
― Peter Tremayne, Absolution By Murder

“The reason was not hard to discern. The head of the body was also shaven with the tonsure of Columba. What remained of his clothing proclaimed it to have once consisted of the habit of a religieux, though there was no sign of the crucifix, leather belt and satchel that a peregrinus pro Christo would have carried. The leading traveller had drawn near on his mule and gazed up with a terrified expression on his white features. Another of the party, one of the two women, urged her mount nearer and gazed up at the corpse with a steady eye. She rode a horse, a fact that signified that she was no ordinary religieuse but a woman of rank. There was no fear on her pale features, just a slight expression of repulsion and curiosity. She was a young woman, tall but well proportioned, a fact scarcely concealed by her sombre dress. Rebellious strands of red hair streaked from beneath her headdress. Her pale-skinned features were attractive and her eyes were bright and it was difficult to discern whether they were blue or green, so changeable with emotion were they. ‘Come away, Sister Fidelma,’ muttered her male companion in agitation. ‘This is not a sight for your eyes.”
― Peter Tremayne, Absolution By Murder

“when he was ædile, he provided such a number of gladiators, that he entertained the people with three hundred and twenty single combats, and by his great liberality and magnificence in theatrical shows, in processions, and public feastings, he threw into the shade all the attempts that had been made before him, and gained so much upon the people, that every one was eager to find out new offices and new honors for him in return for his munificence.”
― Plutarch, Parallel Lives

“by 1950, caught up increasingly in our own global vision of anti-Communism, we chose not to see this war as primarily a colonial/anticolonial war, and we had begun to underwrite most of the French costs. Where our money went our rhetoric soon followed. We adjusted our public statements, and much of our journalism, to make it seem as if this was a war of Communists against anti-Communists, instead, as the people of Vietnam might have seen it, a war of a colonial power against an indigenous nationalist force.”
― David Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest: Kennedy-Johnson Administrations

“He lingered until the 21st of July, 1796, when he expired. The interest which the death of Burns excited was intense. All differences were forgotten; his genius only was thought of. On the 26th of the same month he was conveyed to the grave, followed by about ten thousand individuals of all ranks, many of whom had come from distant parts of the country to witness the solemnity. He was interred with military honors by the Dumfries volunteers, to which body he had belonged.”
― Thomas Carlyle, Life of Robert Burns

“Whatever opinion may be formed of the extent of his dissipation in Dumfries, one fact is unquestionable, that his powers remained unimpaired to the last; it was there he produced his finest lyrics, and they are the finest, as well as the purest, that ever delighted mankind.”
― Thomas Carlyle, Life of Robert Burns

“From his youth Burns had exhibited ominous symptoms of a radical disorder in his constitution. A palpitation of the heart, and a derangement of the digestive organs, were conspicuous. These were, doubtless, increased by his indulgences, which became more frequent as he drew towards the close of his career.”
― Thomas Carlyle, Life of Robert Burns

“in Dumfries his moral career was downwards. Heron, who had some acquaintance with the matter, says, “His dissipation became still more deeply habitual; he was here more exposed than in the country to be solicited to share the revels of the dissolute and the idle; foolish young men flocked eagerly about him, and from time to time pressed him to drink with them, that they might enjoy his wit. The Caledonia Club, too, and the Dumfries-shire and Galloway Hunt, had occasional meetings in Dumfries after Burns went to reside there: and the poet was of course invited to share their conviviality, and hesitated not to accept the invitation. In the intervals between his different fits of intemperance, he suffered the keenest anguish of remorse, and horribly afflictive foresight. His Jane behaved with a degree of conjugal and maternal tenderness and prudence, which made him feel more bitterly the evil of his misconduct, although they could not reclaim him.” This is a dark picture—perhaps too dark.”
― Thomas Carlyle, Life of Robert Burns

“One pleasing trait of his character must not be overlooked. He superintended the formation of a subscription library in the parish, and took the whole management of it upon himself. These institutions, though common now, were not so short at the period of which we write; and it should never be forgotten that Burns was amongst the first, if not the very first, of their founders in the rural districts of southern Scotland.”
― Thomas Carlyle, Life of Robert Burns

“Burns, however, found an inexpressible charm in sitting down beside his wife, at his own fireside; in wandering over his own grounds; in once more putting his hand to the spade and the plough; in farming his enclosures, and managing his cattle. For some months he felt almost all that felicity which fancy had taught him to expect in his new situation. He had been for a time idle; but his muscles were not yet unbraced for rural toil. He now seemed to find a joy in being the husband of the mistress of his affections, and in seeing himself the father of children such as promised to attach him for ever to that modest, humble, and domestic life, in which alone he could hope to be permanently happy.”
― Thomas Carlyle, Life of Robert Burns

“one of the finest volumes of poetry that ever appeared in the world issued from the provincial press of Kilmarnock. It is hardly possible to imagine with what eager admiration and delight they were every where received. They possessed in an eminent degree all those qualities which invariably contribute to render any literary work quickly and permanently popular. They were written in a phraseology of which all the powers were universally felt, and which being at once antique, familiar, and now rarely written, was therefore fitted to serve all the dignified and picturesque uses of poetry, without making it unintelligible”
― Thomas Carlyle, Life of Robert Burns

“The population aids the army. Recently Porkhov schoolboys caught three parachutists. A bearded old villager, armed with a stake, brought in a diversionist, disguised in the green uniform of a pre-revolutionary forester. The peasants drive off the cattle. Grain fields are burning. This year the stalks are almost as tall as an average man. There was not enough time to harvest the grain. Attacks and counterattacks continue. On both sides the losses are heavy. Yesterday one of our tanks caught fire. The driver rushed his burning tank at a German machine.”
― Ilya Ehrenburg, The Tempering of Russia

“As integral as religion was to his sense of self, it was not until he reached West Point and combined his spiritual discipline with Blaik’s military discipline that his coaching persona began to take its mature form. Everything he knew about organizing a team and preparing it to play its best, Lombardi said later, he learned at West Point. “It all came from Red Blaik.”
― David Maraniss, When Pride Still Mattered: A Life Of Vince Lombardi

“Jasu offers a weak smile to the taunting men, but Kavita sees the pain in his eyes. She sees the injured pride, the shame, the disappointment she knows he feels. In this moment, witnessing him in his messy, helpless state, Kavita feels her anger and fear washed away by sorrow. All this time, Jasu has had only one goal above all else, to provide for his family. And over the last twenty years, it seems as if God has been dreaming up one cruel complication after another to keep him from even this modest goal. The poor harvests back in Dahanu, the illusive dhaba-wallah job, the bicycle factory raid, the moneylender, and now his broken hand, dangling limply at his side as he tries to stand. Kavita rushes over to help him. “Come, Jasu-ji,” she says, using the respectful term of address for her husband. “You wanted me to tell you when dinner was ready. I’ve made all your favorites—bhindi masala, khadi, laddoo.”
― Shilpi Somaya Gowda, Secret Daughter

“I had just time to give a glance at these matters, when about twelve blue-coated servants burst into the hall with much tumult and talk, each rather employed in directing his comrades than in discharging his own duty. Some brought blocks and billets to the fire, which roared, blazed, and ascended, half in smoke, half in flame, up a huge tunnel, with an opening wide enough to accommodate a stone seat within its ample vault, and which was fronted, by way of chimney-piece, with a huge piece of heavy architecture, where the monsters of heraldry, embodied by the art of some Northumbrian chisel, grinned and ramped in red free-stone, now japanned by the smoke of centuries. Others of these old-fashioned serving-men bore huge smoking dishes, loaded with substantial fare; others brought in cups, flagons, bottles, yea barrels of liquor. All tramped, kicked, plunged, shouldered, and jostled, doing as little service with as much tumult as could well be imagined”
― Walter Scott, Rob Roy

“We must, therefore, break away once and for all from the metaphors which depict consciousness as a luminous circle round which there is nothing, to its own eyes, but darkness. On the contrary, the shadow is at the centre.”
― Gabriel Marcel, Being and Having

“The obscurity of the external world is a function of my own obscurity to myself; the world has no intrinsic obscurity. Should we say that it comes to the same thing in the end? We must ask up to what point this interior opacity is a result; is it not very largely the consequence of an act? and is not this act simply sin?”
― Gabriel Marcel, Being and Having

“I had been with them a little more than a year; I had been ordained a little more than two years. How inexperienced and immature I felt at this sudden crisis of such proportions. Supported by the routines of a parish priest, I had ministered to these people in their daily problems, helped them, consoled them, said Mass and brought Communion to the sick, anointed the dying. I had made many friends among them, and they trusted me, young as I was—the young American in their midst. But the war changed everything.”
― Walter J. Ciszek, He Leadeth Me: An Extraordinary Testament of Faith

“The Soviets are here.” The news spread like panic through the small village of Albertyn, Poland, on October 17, 1939. I had just finished Mass and breakfast on that memorable morning, when bewildered parishioners came to the mission to tell me the news. It was news we had feared ever since it had become clear that Germany and Russia were dividing up Poland. But now our fears were a reality. The Red Army was in Albertyn.”
― Walter J. Ciszek, He Leadeth Me: An Extraordinary Testament of Faith

“I was lonely enough and homesick in the years that followed. My father died while I was studying in Rome, and I could not be at his funeral. When I was at last ordained in Rome, none of my family could afford to make the trip to be with me. Yet through those years I never once wavered in my conviction that God had called me for the Russian missions; I never doubted that I would one day serve him there.”
― Walter J. Ciszek, He Leadeth Me: An Extraordinary Testament of Faith

“It was as if my whole life, in God’s plan, had pointed to this moment. I could remember vividly that day so long ago, during the second year of my noviceship at St. Andrew’s in New York, when our novice master read us a letter from Pius XI asking for volunteers to join a new Russian mission just opened in Rome. Even as he read the letter, something within me stirred. I could hardly wait for the conference to finish so I could go to the novice master and volunteer for this new Russian apostolate.”
― Walter J. Ciszek, He Leadeth Me: An Extraordinary Testament of Faith

“I knew what my answer would be. I had no doubts, no fears, no hesitation. I knew what I was going to do next, what I had wanted all my life, what the mission to Albertyn had been meant for in God’s providence.”
― Walter J. Ciszek, He Leadeth Me: An Extraordinary Testament of Faith

“Makar had come, however, with more in mind than the message about the closing of the mission. He had asked to be the one to deliver that message because he wanted to sound me out on the possibility of going into Russia. He told me that he and Father Victor Nestrov, another of my classmates from our years at the Russicum, had discussed with their superiors the possibility of Jesuits accompanying labor brigades to the Soviet Union in order to minister to their needs. The plan was simple enough. The Soviets were hiring large numbers from the occupied zones to work in Russian factories around the Ural Mountains. They had also been rounding up suspects of all kinds and shipping them off to work camps in the Urals. Makar and Nestrov talked quite simply of going with some of these laborers across the Russian border. But they knew I would want to join them.”
― Walter J. Ciszek, He Leadeth Me: An Extraordinary Testament of Faith

“We go along, taking for granted that tomorrow will be very much like today, comfortable in the world we have created for ourselves, secure in the established order we have learned to live with, however imperfect it may be, and give little thought to God at all. Somehow, then, God must contrive to break through those routines of ours and remind us once again, like Israel, that we are ultimately dependent only upon him, that he has made us and destined us for life with him through all eternity, that the things of this world and this world itself are not our lasting city, that his we are and that we must look to him and turn to him in everything. Then it is, perhaps, that he must allow our whole world to be turned upside down in order to remind us it is not our permanent abode or final destiny, to bring us to our senses and restore our sense of values, to turn our thoughts once more to him—even if at first our thoughts are questioning and full of reproaches. Then it is that he must remind us again, with terrible clarity, that he meant exactly what he said in those seemingly simple words of the Sermon on the Mount: “Do not be anxious about what you shall eat, or what you shall wear, or where you shall sleep, but seek first the kingdom of God and his justice.”
― Walter J. Ciszek, He Leadeth Me: An Extraordinary Testament of Faith

“Mysteriously, God in his providence must make use of our tragedies to remind our fallen human nature of his presence and his love, of the constancy of his concern and care for us. It is not vindictiveness on his part; he does not send us tragedies to punish us for having so long forgotten him. The failing is on our part.”
― Walter J. Ciszek, He Leadeth Me: An Extraordinary Testament of Faith

“I still remember one from when I was a child. It was about a bear trying to get into a jar of honey. He never gave up. I thought about that when I was trying to get clean. I had to just keep on trying to open that honey jar.” “I liked to read to my kids when they were young. My son much preferred my wife to do it, but when I got to do it, it felt really special. I liked the stories, too.” “Everyone has a good story to tell, Arthur. If you’d have told me last night that I’d have an adventurous old bloke kipping at my house for the night, I’d think I was going mad. But here you are. You’re all right, Arthur, for a posh pensioner,” he teased. “And so are you, for a bit of a scruffbag.”
― Phaedra Patrick, The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper

“You can’t stop people doing what they want to do if they really want to do it. Perhaps she thought that her life before you was no longer relevant. Sometimes when you’ve lived a chapter of your life, you don’t want to look back. I lost five years of my life through drugs. All I remember is waking up feeling like shit, or roaming the streets looking to score, or the delirium after I’d shot up. I don’t ever want to look back at that. I want to get back on my feet, get a proper job, maybe find a girl who’s good for me.” Arthur nodded. He understood what Mike was saying,”
― Phaedra Patrick, The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper

“Camelot—Camelot," said I to myself.  "I don't seem to remember hearing of it before.  Name of the asylum, likely." It was a soft, reposeful summer landscape, as lovely as a dream, and as lonesome as Sunday.  The air was full of the smell of flowers, and the buzzing of insects, and the twittering of birds, and there were no people, no wagons, there was no stir of life, nothing going on.  The road was mainly a winding path with hoof-prints in it, and now and then a faint trace of wheels on either side in the grass—wheels that apparently had a tire as broad as one's hand. Presently a fair slip of a girl, about ten years old, with a cataract of golden hair streaming down over her shoulders, came along. Around her head she wore a hoop of flame-red poppies. It was as sweet an outfit as ever I saw, what there was of it.  She walked indolently along, with a mind at rest, its peace reflected in her innocent face.  The circus man paid no attention to her; didn't even seem to see her.  And she—she was no more startled at his fantastic make-up than if she was used to his like every day of her life.  She was going by as indifferently as she might have gone by a couple of cows; but when she happened to notice me, then there was a change!  Up went her hands, and she was turned to stone;”
― Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

“Now the story of Abraham has the remarkable property that it is always glorious, however poorly one may understand it; yet here again the proverb applies, that all depends upon whether one is willing to labor and be heavy laden. But they will not labor, and yet they would understand the story.”
― Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling

“For the outward world is subjected to the law of imperfection, and again and again the experience is repeated that he too who does not work gets the bread, and that he who sleeps gets it more abundantly than the man who works. In the outward world everything is made payable to the bearer, this world is in bondage to the law of indifference, and to him who has the ring, the spirit of the ring is obedient, whether he be Noureddin or Aladdin, and he who has the world's treasure, has it, however he got it. It is different in the world of spirit. Here an eternal divine order prevails, here it does not rain both upon the just and upon the unjust, here the sun does not shine both upon the good and upon the evil, here it holds good that only he who works gets the bread, only he who was in anguish finds repose, only he who descends into the underworld rescues the beloved, only he who draws the knife gets Isaac.”
― Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling