The Catholic Book Club discussion

2. Please feel free to share your favorite quotes or scenes here. Please feel free to share why you found it significant.

“that mysterious scheme of faith and art and life that the world calls Roman Catholicism”

What an accurate description!

“Real faith cannot be shaken because it is the result of having been shaken”-Kreeft, ‘Love is Stronger than Death’

Wonderful quotations! And Sara, I love the work of Peter Kreeft.

Have had several favorite quotes, but too lazy to go back right now, maybe when I finish it all.

For now I will post this, from Chapter 3 of Part 3.

Conversation, in the intervals of shooting, is capable of becoming strangely intimate. There is no time for frills and periphrases. Things must be said quickly, or not at all. Further, there is a kind of primitiveness, a sense of companionship in the wild that favours intimacy. And, lastly, the sexes are in their original relations to one another; the man is performing, and the woman is admiring

“Four years later his mother, at great cost to herself, had travelled north from Cardiff with all her luggage in a single bundle; had been present at his ordination to the priesthood, had kissed his hands and received his blessing; had assisted at his first mass and received Holy Communion from him. Then, in an ecstasy of pain and happiness, she had returned to her shop in Cardiff, and had seen him no more. But she knew that she had for a son a priest and a friar.”

"It is a tolerable definition of a bore that he is one who talks about himself when you want to talk about yourself." (Part I, chapter 1)

"merely suffering under one of those fits of agnosticism that attack the adolescent Christian almost as punctually as scarlet fever or measles attack a child" (Part I, chapter 12)

"These [being kind at home, working conscientiously...] are not qualities that will shake the world; but, after all, there is the best authority for believing that they are of considerable importance in the world that is to come" (of Reggie, Part II, chapter 6)

"{Mrs. Bennett] who, like so many very good people, took a strange interest in iniquity." (Part III, chapter 12)

Richard wrote: "“Four years later his mother, at great cost to herself, had travelled north from Cardiff with all her luggage in a single bundle; had been present at his ordination to the priesthood, had kissed hi..."

This short description of the mother's sacrifices moves me deeply.

"It was like passing from the study of a Republican President, to the ante-chamber of a crowned and anointed King. . . ." I'm not much of a dating, but I found this one curious and it talks about Benson's monarchical character and his misgivings about republics. I think Sergio Gómez Moyano commented on some of that in his prologue to "The Dawn of All"

"There are few differences in this drab-coloured world so startling as those between various kinds of minds. One man, after a glance at a fragment of bone, will reconstruct Hercules; another, after the entire skeleton stands before him, will even then question whether it is Hercules at all. One man will by intuition discover, or believe himself to have discovered, an entire new philosophy; another will spend laborious days in working out a sum, with the help of the most prosaic of all faculties, and, even then sometimes will get it wrong, or, what is worse, doubt his own accuracy."

I like these quotes, too! (This and the one about Fr Hilary posted on the favorite character conversation)