Christopher > Christopher's Quotes

“I don't know, I don't care, and it doesn't make any difference.”
― Jack Kerouac

“The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.”
― Flannery O'Connor

“When you leave a man alone with his Bible and the Holy Ghost inspires him, he's going to be a Catholic one way or another, even though he knows nothing about the visible church. His kind of Christianity may not be socially desirable, but will be real in the sight of God.”
― Flannery O'Connor, The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor

“Out of the darkness of my life, so much frustrated, I put before you the one great thing to love on earth: the Blessed Sacrament … There you will find romance, glory, honour, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves upon earth.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien

“Because I am Beat, I believe in Beatitude and that God so loved the world He gave His only begotten Son to it.”
― Jack Kerouac

“The fiction of Ayn Rand is as low as you can get re fiction. I hope you picked it up off the floor of the subway and threw it in the nearest garbage pail. She makes Mickey Spillane look like Dostoevsky.”
― Flannery O'Connor

“All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

“They said I would never live. I lived. They said I would never think. I think. They said I would never walk. I walked. They said I would never dance, but I never danced anyway.”
― Benedict J. Groeschel

“The Catholic novelist in the South will see many distorted images of Christ, but he will certainly feel that a distorted image of Christ is better than no image at all. I think he will feel a good deal more kinship with backwoods prophets and shouting fundamentalists than he will with those politer elements for whom the supernatural is an embarrassment and for whom religion has become a department of sociology or culture or personality development.”
― Flannery O'Connor

“I remember once in the Holy Land seeing a sign in the shape of an arrow along a road. It said, "Armageddon, 4 kilometers." If ever there was a sign that made you wonder whether you wanted to continue down a road, this was it.”
― Benedict J. Groeschel, After This Life: What Catholics Believe about What Happens Next

“We who believe in Divine Providence, in life after death, in salvation and resurrection; we, of all people, when faced with catastrophe, must go on with courage, faith, and hope.”
― Benedict J. Groeschel, Tears of God: Persevering in the Face of Great Sorrow or Catastrophe

“Divine Revelation is God speaking. Faith is man listening.”
― John A. Hardon

“Unwittingly, the feminists acknowledge the superiority of the male sex by wishing to become like men.”
― Alice von Hildebrand, The Privilege of Being a Woman

“I don't deserve any credit for turning the other cheek as my tongue is always in it.”
― Flannery O'Connor, The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor

“All human nature vigorously resists grace because grace changes us and the change is painful.”
― Flannery O'Connor, The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor

“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”
― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

“One must never underestimate the profound bigotry and anti-intellectualism and intolerance and illiberality of liberalism.”
― Richard John Neuhaus

“Boys and girls in America have such a sad time together; sophistication demands that they submit to sex immediately without proper preliminary talk. Not courting talk — real straight talk about souls, for life is holy and every moment is precious.”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

“Don't use the phone. People are never ready to answer it. Use poetry.”
― Jack Kerouac

“Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best-seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.”
― Flannery O'Connor

“Whenever I’m asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one.”
― Flannery O'Connor

“Truth is not determined by a majority vote.”
― Pope Benedict XVI

“Evil draws its power from indecision and concern for what other people think.”
― Pope Benedict XVI

“Respect for the dignity of others includes treating them as rational creatures capable of being persuadad by rational argument, even in the face of frequent evidence to the contrary.”
― Richard John Neuhaus, American Babylon: Notes of a Christian Exile

“It is possible to argue that the true business of faith is not to produce emotional conviction in us, but to teach us to do without it.”
― Ronald Knox, A Retreat for Lay People

“A rush age cannot be a reflective age.”
― Ronald Knox, The Belief of Catholics

“The motor-car, in brining us all closer together, by making it easy to have luncheon two counties away, has driven us all further apart, by making it unnecessary for us to know the people in the next bungalow. And so, once again, we have to thank civilization for nothing.”
― Ronald Knox, Barchester Pilgrimage

“In the Desert

In the desert
I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
Who, squatting upon the ground,
Held his heart in his hands,
And ate of it.
I said, “Is it good, friend?”
“It is bitter—bitter,” he answered;

“But I like it
“Because it is bitter,
“And because it is my heart.”
― Stephen Crane, The Black Riders and Other Lines

“Princes & Kings

Isn't it strange how princes and kings,
and clowns that caper in sawdust rings,
and common people, like you and me,
are builders for eternity?

Each is given a list of rules;
a shapeless mass; a bag of tools.
And each must fashion, ere life is flown,
A stumbling block, or a Stepping-Stone.”
― R. Lee Sharpe

“God has created me to do Him some definite service. He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another. I have my mission. I may never know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next. I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons.

He has not created me for naught. I shall do good; I shall do His work. I shall be an angel of peace, a preacher of truth in my own place, while not intending it if I do but keep His commandments.

Therefore, I will trust Him, whatever I am, I can never be thrown away. If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him, in perplexity, my perplexity may serve Him. If I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him. He does nothing in vain. He knows what He is about. He may take away my friends. He may throw me among strangers. He may make me feel desolate, make my spirits sink, hide my future from me. Still, He knows what He is about.”
― John Henry Newman