Tom > Tom's Quotes

“So you see how endlessly futile and fruitless it would be if we wanted to refute their objections every time they obstinately resolved not to think through what they say but merely to speak, just so long as they contradict our arguments in any way they can.”
― Augustine of Hippo, The City of God: Books 1-10

“Practically all human literature deals with the present and the past; when literature tries to describe the future, it at once ceases to be human and ceases to be literature; and all the pictures which the Bolsheviks have so far given us of a future world constructed on the design of Lenin are so depressing that nobody would like to read about such a world, much less to live in it.”
― Francis Mccullagh, A prisoner of the Reds, the story of a British officer captured Siberia

“Drum sound rises on the air, its throb, my heart.

A voice inside the beat says, "I know you're tired, but come. This is the way.”
― Rumi, The Essential Rumi

“You are so weak. Give up to grace.
The ocean takes care of each wave till it gets to shore.
You need more help than you know.”
― Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi, The Essential Rumi

“You have forgotten the One
who doesn't care about ownership,
who doesn't try to turn a profit
from every human exchange.”
― Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi, The Essential Rumi

“There is a secret medicine given only to those who hurt so hard they can't hope.”
― Rumi, The Essential Rumi

“The Philosopher, too, says of the wicked (Ethic. ix, 4) that "their soul is divided against itself . . . one part pulls this way, another that"; and afterwards he concludes, saying: "If wickedness makes a man so miserable, he should strain every nerve to avoid vice.”
― Thomas Aquinas, The Summa Theologica: Complete Edition

“…is there anyone so deaf that he cannot hear in Byzantine churches some echo of the Catacombs? What could be more natural than that just as martyrs made paintings for martyrs, latter-day bureaucrats paint for bureaucrats?”
― Miklos Haraszti

“At the core of liberalism is the spoiled child — miserable, as all spoiled children are, unsatisfied, demanding, ill-disciplined, despotic and useless. Liberalism is a philosophy of sniveling brats.”
― P.J. O'Rourke, Give War a Chance: Eyewitness Accounts of Mankind's Struggle Against Tyranny, Injustice, and Alcohol-Free Beer