Rum > Rum's Quotes

“Your worst sin is that you have destroyed and betrayed yourself for nothing.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

“Do we walk in legends or on the green earth in the daylight?'

A man may do both,' said Aragorn. 'For not we but those who come after will make the legends of our time. The green earth, say you? That is a mighty matter of legend, though you tread it under the light of day!”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers

“Conscience is not a long-sighted selfishness, nor a desire to be consistent with oneself; but it is a messenger from Him, who, both in nature and in grace, speaks to us behind a veil, and teaches and rules us by His representatives. Conscience is the aboriginal Vicar of Christ, a prophet in its informations, a monarch in its peremptoriness, a priest in its blessings and anathemas, and, even though the eternal priesthood throughout the Church could cease to be, in it the sacerdotal principle would remain and would have a sway.”
― John Henry Newman, A Letter Addressed to His Grace the Duke of Norfolk: On Occasion of Mr. Gladstone's Recent Expostulation

“If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.”
― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

“I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

“Oh yes, I believe that. It's a lovely idea."

"But you can't believe things because they're a lovely idea."

"But I do. That's how I believe.”
― Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited

“To suffer terribly and to know yourself as the cause: that is Hell.”
― Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos

“or it may be a private bargain between me and God, that if I give up this one thing I want so much, however bad I am, He won’t quite despair of me in the end.”
― Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder

“Your life becomes meaningful in precise proportion to the depths of the responsibility you are willing to shoulder.”
― Jordan B. Peterson, Beyond Order: 12 More Rules For Life

“It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which,if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree helping each other to one or the other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all of our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

“In Science we have been reading only the notes to a poem; in Christianity we find the poem itself.”
― C.S. Lewis, Miracles

“But I wonder whether people who ask God to interfere openly and directly in our world quite realise what it will be like when He does. When that happens, it is the end of the world. When the author walks on to the stage the play is over.”
― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

“Might it not be the case that the damned are damned insofar as they have established a terrifying distance between themselves and God--a distance that makes the magnitude of the sacrifice and reconfiguration necessary to reconcile their evil with God something daunting to the point of holy terror? Might it not be the case that those suffering in that manner are
doing so because they have invited the darkness in, and collaborated with it, such that they cannot easily forgive themselves? That would make the reality of hell precisely equivalent to eternal or cosmic justice- the necessary consequence of the eventual or even hypothetical state where nothing is hidden and everything made manifest: "For nothing is secret that will not be revealed, nor anything hidden that will not be known and come to light?”
― Jordan B. Peterson, We Who Wrestle with God: Perceptions of the Divine

“For Thou hast made us for Thyself and our hearts are restless til they rest in Thee.”
― Augustine of Hippo, Confessions

“For without Thee, what am I but a guide to my own destruction?”
― Augustine of Hippo, Confessions

“And where was I to find such pleasures save in You, O Lord, You who use sorrow to teach, and wound us to heal, and kill us lest we die to You.”
― Augustine of Hippo, Confessions

“You are trying to measure, understand, feel and touch this love which you have for God, but, my dear sister, you must accept as certain that the more a soul loves God the less it feels this love.”
― Padre Pio, Padre Pio: In My Own Words

“Through the study of books one seeks God; by meditation one finds him.”
― Padre Pio

“Stay in the boat in which our Lord has placed you and let the storm come. You will not perish. It appears to you that Jesus is sleeping, but let it be so. Don't you know that if he sleeps, his heart vigilantly watches over you? Let him sleep, but at the right time he will awaken to restore your calm. Scripture tells us that dearest Saint Peter was frightened, and trembling, he exclaimed: 'Oh Lord, save me!' And our Lord, taking him by the hand, replied: 'Oh man of little faith, why did you doubt?' My daughter, observe this holy apostle. He walks with dry feet on the water; the waves and winds do not submerge him, but the fear of the winds and waves discourages and disheartens him. Fear is an evil worse than the evil itself. Oh daughter of little faith, what do you fear? Isn't he watching over you? You are walking on the sea and you find the wind and waves, but isn't it enough to be with Jesus? What is there to fear? But if fear takes you by surprise, cry out aloud: 'Oh Lord, save me!' He will stretch out his hand to you; hold on to it tightly and joyfully walk on the stormy sea of life.”
― Padre Pio, Padre Pio: In My Own Words

“Console yourself, I repeat, that as long as you are afraid that you do not love God, and as long as you fear to offend him, you laready love him and no longer offend him.”
― Padre Pio, Padre Pio: In My Own Words

“Fairyland is nothing but the sunny country of common sense. It is not earth that judges heaven, but heaven that judges earth; so for me at least it was not earth that criticized elfland, but elfland that criticized earth.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

“I left the fairy tales lying on the floor of the nursery, and I have not found any books so sensible since.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The G.K. Chesterton Collection [34 Books]

“In a darkened world no longer illuminated by the light of this center [God], technical advances are scarcely more than despairing attempts to make Hell a more agreeable place to live in. This must be particularly emphasized against those who think that by spreading the civilization of science and technology even to the uttermost ends of the earth, they can furnish all the essential preconditions for a golden age. One cannot escape the Devil so easily as that.”
― Werner Heisenberg, Across the Frontier

“I had always believed that the world involved magic: now I thought that perhaps it involved a magician. And this pointed a profound emotion always present and subconscious; that this world of ours has some purpose; and if there is a purpose, there is a person. I had always felt life first as a story: and if there is a story there is a storyteller.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

“Even though man now and then acts as if he lived in a jungle, one can still see in some of his actions that he once played in a garden.”
― Fulton J. Sheen, Three to Get Married