A.O. > A.O.'s Quotes

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

“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

“If you believe what you like in the Gospel, and reject what you don't like, it is not the Gospel you believe, but yourself.”
― Augustine

“In order to discover the character of people we have only to observe what they love.”
― St. Augustine

“God has promised forgiveness to your repentance, but He has not promised tomorrow to your procrastination.”
― St. Augustine of Hippo

“God provides the wind, Man must raise the sail. ”
― St. Augustine

“If you think that moral reasoning is something we do to figure out the truth, you’ll be constantly frustrated by how foolish, biased, and illogical people become when they disagree with you.”
― Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion

“This ability to exist in pieces is what some adults call resilience. And I suppose in some way it is a kind of resilience, a horrible resilience that makes adults believe children forget trauma.”
― Lynda Barry, One Hundred Demons

“All sins are attempts to fill voids.”
― Simone Weil

“Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.”
― Simone Weil

“There is nothing on this earth more to be prized than true friendship.”
― Thomas Aquinas

“We must love them both, those whose opinions we share and those whose opinions we reject, for both have labored in the search for truth, and both have helped us in finding it.”
― St. Thomas Aquinas

“The soul is like an uninhabited world
that comes to life only when
God lays His head
against us.”
― St. Thomas Aquinas

“The things that we love tell us what we are.”
― St. Thomas Aquinas

“Busy remaking the world, man forgot to remake himself.”
― Andrei Platonov

“He walked around all the useless things in the courtyard and touched them with his hands; for some reason, he wished that these would remember him, and love him. But he didn't believe they would. From childhood memories he knew how strange and sad it is after a long absence to see a familiar place again, for these unmoving objects have no memory and do not recognize the stirrings of a stranger's heart.”
― Andrei Platonov, The Fierce and Beautiful World

“Everything in the existing world seemed strange to him; it was as if the world had been created for some brief, mocking game. But this game of make-believe had dragged on for a long time,for eternity, and nobody felt like laughing anymore.”
― Andrei Platonov, Soul

“Inside every poor creature was a sense of some other happy destiny, a destiny that was necessary and inevitable -why, then, did they find their lives such a burden and why were they always waiting for something?”
― Andrei Platonov, Soul

“O masses, o masses! When will you assume the image and likeness of your avant-garde?”
― Andrei Platonov

“If someone wants to give you money, whatever the source, you should take it. Every religious-historical authority agrees about that.”
― Antal Szerb

“At the heart of all great art is an essential melancholy.”
― Federico García Lorca

“If I told you the whole story it would never end...What's happened to me has happened to a thousand woman.”
― Federico Garcia Lorca, Dona Rosita la soltera

“I believe that words uttered in passion contain a greater living truth than do those words which express thoughts rationally conceived. It is blood that moves the body. Words are not meant to stir the air only: they are capable of moving greater things.”
― Natsume Soseki, Kokoro

“Let's make sure it's really raining before we worry about floods.”
― Grady Hendrix, Horrorstör

“Inspiration is a word used by people who aren't really doing anything.”
― Nick Cave

“All of our days are numbered; we cannot afford to be idle. To act on a bad idea is better than to not act at all because the worth of the idea never becomes apparent until you do it. Sometimes this idea can be the smallest thing in the world, a little flame that you hunch over and cup with your hand and pray will not be extinguished by all the storm that howls about it. If you can hold on to that flame great things can be constructed around it that are massive and powerful and world changing – all held up by the tinniest of ideas.”
― Nick Cave

“We were sitting at the bar on the ninth floor. No alcohol served after dark––and it was always after dark. I watched two men stumble across the dance floor, arms entwined, faces slack with boredom. The pianist plowed through a joylessly jaunty tune, the musical equivalent of a man dancing at gunpoint. My drinking companion grinned.”
― A.O. Monk, Endless Holiday

“The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.”
― Plato

“Never discourage anyone...who continually makes progress, no matter how slow.”
― Plato

“Let others praise ancient times; I am glad I was born in these.”
― Ovid