The Master

by Colm Tóibín

Making such leaps requires us to be brave and determined, but doing so also may freeze any other possibilities. It is easier to renounce bravery rather than to be brave over and over.

“I am interested in religious feeling or experience rather than religious argument,” William said. “I wish to make clear that even the very words I use are open and evasive and sometimes useless, that there are no precise words because there are no precise feelings. We have mixed feelings and complex sensibilities and we must allow for that in our lives and in our law and in our politics, but most important, in the deepest core of ourselves.”

“The world beyond the senses, in which a sphere of life more powerful and larger than ourselves exists, may be continuous with our consciousness and we may know this and this may cause us to believe or have religious feeling, however vague, in a more satisfying way than we have religious argument.”