Daniel

“I labored sedulously and anxiously about the sense of Rom. 1:17, where St. Paul says that the righteousness of God is revealed in the Gospel. There I long sought and knocked; for the words “righteousness of God” were in my way, which was usually explained as meaning a virtue in God according to which He is just in Himself and condemns sinners. Thus all the doctors had explained it, Augustine alone excepted, saying that the righteousness of God is the wrath of God. But as often as I read this passage I wished that God had never revealed the Gospel. For who is able to love a God that is angry, judges, and condemns? Finally, by the enlightenment of the Holy Spirit I more diligently pondered the words of the Prophet Habakkuk, chap, 2, verse 4, where he says: ‘The just shall live by faith.’ From this I gathered that life must come from faith, and so referred the abstract to the concrete. Thus the whole Scriptures were opened to me, and the whole heavens also.” (On Gen. 27:38, Erl. Lat, 7:74.)”
― Martin Luther quoted by Matthias Loy

“There Lancelot, low and softly to himself singing, the sun greeted, 215 life from darkness lifted shining in the dome of heaven by death exalted. Ever times would change and tides alter, and o’er hills of morning hope come striding to awake the weary, while the world lasted.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fall of Arthur

“It would be hard to find any legitimate point of view from which this feeling could be condemned. As the family offers us the first step beyond self-love, so this offers us the first step beyond family selfishness. Of course it is not pure charity; it involves love of our neighbours in the local, not of our Neighbour, in the Dominical, sense. But those who do not love the fellow-villagers or fellow-townsmen whom they have seen are not likely to have got very far towards loving ‘Man’ whom they have not. All natural affections, including this, can become rivals to spiritual love: but they can also be preparatory imitations of it, training (so to speak) of the spiritual muscles which Grace may later put to a higher service; as women nurse dolls in childhood and later nurse children.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

“Brandon is just the kind of man,” said Willoughby one day, when they were talking of him together, “whom every body speaks well of, and nobody cares about; whom all are delighted to see, and nobody remembers to talk to.”
― Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility