Mikael Rose

“In this same contemporary world of ours there remains the indestructible (for otherwise human nature itself would have to be destroyed) gift innate in all men which impels them now and again to escape from the restricted sphere where they labor for their necessities and provide for their security—to escape not by mere forgetting, but by undeceived recollection of the greater, more real reality. Now, as always, the workaday world can be transcended in poetry and the other arts. In the shattering emotion of love, beyond the delusions of sensuality, men continue to find entrance to the still point of the turning world. Now, as always, the experience of death as man's destiny, if accepted with an open and unarmored heart, acquaints us with a dimension of existence which fosters a detachment from the immediate aims of practical life. Now, as always, the philosophical mind will react with awe to the mystery of being revealed in a grain of matter or a human face.”
― Josef Pieper, In Tune With The World: A Theory of Festivity

“In Christ's Resurrection something began by which man's life ever since, and today and for all the future, received that incomprehensible exaltation that the language of theology calls Grace and New Life. And therefore in the Christian celebration of Easter quite particularly an affirmation of the whole of existence is experienced and celebrated. No more rightful, more comprehensive and fundamental affirmation can be conceived.
The gift of having been created, the promise of perfect bliss, the communication of divine vitality through Incarnation and Resurrection—all these are things, we might say, which determine human life every hour of every day, if the Christians are right.”
― Josef Pieper, In Tune With The World: A Theory of Festivity

“Sometimes, Lord, one is tempted to say that if you wanted us to behave like the lilies of the field you might have given us an organization more like theirs. But that, I suppose, is just your grand experiment. Or no; not an experiment, for you have no need to find things out. Rather your grand enterprise. To make an organism which is also a spirit; to make that terrible oxymoron, a 'spiritual animal.' To take a poor primate, a beast with nerve-endings all over it, a creature with a stomach that wants to be filled, a breeding animal that wants its mate, and say, 'Now get on with it. Become a god.”
― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

“When the music was done, I shrieked at Julian Castle, who was transfixed, too, 'My God - life! Who can understand even one little minute of it?'
'Don't try,' he said. 'Just pretend you understand.'
'That's - that's very good advice,' I went limp.
Castle quoted another poem:

Tiger got to hunt,
Bird got to fly;
Man got to sit and wonder, 'Why, why, why?'
Tiger got to sleep,
Bird got to land;
Man got to tell himself he understand.”
― Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Cat’s Cradle