Patrick Sanders > Patrick's Quotes

“If we affirm one moment, we thus affirm not only ourselves but all existence. For nothing is self-sufficient, neither in us ourselves nor in things; and if our soul has trembled with happiness and sounded like a harp string just once, all eternity was needed to produce this one event - and in this single moment of affirmation all eternity was called good, redeemed, justified, and affirmed.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“Men must endure
Their going hence, even as their coming hither.
Ripeness is all.”
― William Shakespeare, King Lear

“My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness.”
― Dalai Lama XIV

“I have read in Plato and Cicero sayings that are wise and very beautiful; but I have never read in either of them: Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden.”
― Saint Augustine

“If you live today, you breath in nihilism ... it's the gas you breathe. If I hadn't had the Church to fight it with or to tell me the necessity of fighting it, I would be the stinkingest logical positivist you ever saw right now.”
― Flannery O'Connor

“It is not as a child that I believe and confess Jesus Christ. My hosanna is born of a furnace of doubt.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“The best fantasy is written in the language of dreams. It is alive as dreams are alive, more real than real ... for a moment at least ... that long magic moment before we wake.

Fantasy is silver and scarlet, indigo and azure, obsidian veined with gold and lapis lazuli. Reality is plywood and plastic, done up in mud brown and olive drab. Fantasy tastes of habaneros and honey, cinnamon and cloves, rare red meat and wines as sweet as summer. Reality is beans and tofu, and ashes at the end. Reality is the strip malls of Burbank, the smokestacks of Cleveland, a parking garage in Newark. Fantasy is the towers of Minas Tirith, the ancient stones of Gormenghast, the halls of Camelot. Fantasy flies on the wings of Icarus, reality on Southwest Airlines. Why do our dreams become so much smaller when they finally come true?

We read fantasy to find the colors again, I think. To taste strong spices and hear the songs the sirens sang. There is something old and true in fantasy that speaks to something deep within us, to the child who dreamt that one day he would hunt the forests of the night, and feast beneath the hollow hills, and find a love to last forever somewhere south of Oz and north of Shangri-La.

They can keep their heaven. When I die, I'd sooner go to middle Earth.”
― George R.R. Martin

“Let us not underestimate how hard it is to be compassionate. Compassion is hard because it requires the inner disposition to go with others to place where they are weak, vulnerable, lonely, and broken. But this is not our spontaneous response to suffering. What we desire most is to do away with suffering by fleeing from it or finding a quick cure for it.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen

“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.”
― Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

“I love mankind ... it's people I can't stand!!”
― Charles M. Schulz

“The road to hell is paved with adverbs.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“Only the phoenix rises and does not descend. And everything changes. And nothing is truly lost.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 10: The Wake

“Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee.”
― Augustine of Hippo, Confessions

“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”
― Albert Einstein

“Hope has two beautiful daughters; their names are Anger and Courage. Anger at the way things are, and Courage to see that they do not remain as they are.”
― Augustine of Hippo

“Faith is to believe what you do not yet see; the reward for this faith is to see what you believe.”
― Saint Augustine

“After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.”
― Philip Pullman

“We owe it to each other to tell stories.”
― Neil Gaiman

“What are these fundamental principles, if they are not atoms?"
"Stories. And they give me hope.”
― Neil Gaiman, Marvel 1602

“The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.”
― Soren Kierkegaard

“If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Is it folly to believe in something that is intangible? After all, some of the greatest intangibles are Love, Hope, and Wonder.

Another is Deity.

The choice to be a fool is yours.”
― Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration

“He's not safe, but he's good (referring to Aslan, the Lion, in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe)”
― C. S. Lewis

“Doubt isn't the opposite of faith; it is an element of faith.”
― Paul Tillich

“Religion is the state of being grasped by an ultimate concern, a concern which qualifies all other concerns as preliminary and which itself contains the answer to the question of a meaning of our life." Paul Tillich”
― Paul Tillich

“I would believe only in a God that knows how to dance.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.”
― Groucho Marx, The Essential Groucho: Writings For By And About Groucho Marx

“The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science.”
― Albert Einstein, The World As I See It

“Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisioned by the enemy, don't we consider it his duty to escape?. . .If we value the freedom of mind and soul, if we're partisans of liberty, then it's our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us as we can!”
― J.R.R. Tolkien

“The hallmark of intelligence is not whether one believes in God or not, but the quality of the processes that underlie one’s beliefs.”
― Alister McGrath