Curby Graham

“How can the meek of the earth save themselves against the damnable evil which feeds on them?”
― Walter Wangerin Jr., The Book of the Dun Cow

“Almost as evil as the stench was the silence. Senex, however poorly he had ended his rule, had always remembered the canonical crows. He sang them, to be sure, in a disoriented manner; but he did sing them, keeping his animals that way, banding them, unifying them.

But Cockatrice never crowed the canon. So under him the day lost its meaning and its direction, and the animals lost any sense of time or purpose. Their land became strange to them. A terrible feeling of danger entered their souls, of things undone, of treasures unprotected. They were tired all the day long, and at night they did not sleep. And it was a most pitiful sight to see, how they all went about with hunched shoulders, heads tucked in, limping here and there as if they were forever walking into an ill wind, and flinching at every sound as if the wind carried arrows.”
― Walter Wangerin Jr., The Book of the Dun Cow

“God makes a good use even of the wicked, and all things work together for good to them that love Him. [1245] For all the enemies of the Church, whatever error blinds or malice depraves them, exercise her patience if they receive the power to afflict her corporally; and if they only oppose her by wicked thought, they exercise her wisdom:”
― Augustine of Hippo, The Complete Works of Saint Augustine: The Confessions, On Grace and Free Will, The City of God, On Christian Doctrine, Expositions on the Book Of Psalms, ...

“the devil, the prince of the impious city, when he stirs up his own vessels against the city of God that sojourns in this world, is permitted to do her no harm. For without doubt the divine providence procures for her both consolation through prosperity, that she may not be broken by adversity, and trial through adversity, that she may not be corrupted by prosperity; and thus each is tempered by the other,”
― Augustine of Hippo, The Complete Works of Saint Augustine: The Confessions, On Grace and Free Will, The City of God, On Christian Doctrine, Expositions on the Book Of Psalms, ...