Allen O'Brien

“Learn the lesson that, if you are to do the work of a prophet, what you need is not a sceptre but a hoe.”
― Bernard of Clairvaux

“There's more beauty in truth, even if it is dreadful beauty.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“God himself culminates in the present moment, and will never be more divine in the lapse of all the ages.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden or, Life in the Woods

“Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word "love" here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace - not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth.”
― James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time