Christopher Moellering > Christopher's Quotes

“If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.”
― Stephen King

“Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.”
― Aldous Huxley, Complete Essays, Vol. II: 1926-1929

“I can't imagine a man really enjoying a book and reading it only once.”
― C.S. Lewis

“Books are mirrors: you only see in them what you already have inside you.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

“Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Alarms and Discursions

“Lighthouses don’t go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining.”
― Anne Lamott

“Fools talk, cowards are silent, wise men listen.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafon, The Shadow of the Wind

“You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you mad.”
― Aldous Huxley

“Every book, every volume you see here, has a soul. The soul of the person who wrote it and of those who read it and lived and dreamed with it. Every time a book changes hands, every time someone runs his eyes down its pages, its spirit grows and strengthens.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

“If you liked being a teenager, there's something really wrong with you.”
― Stephen King

“To obtain the gift of holiness is the work of a life.”
― John Henry Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons

“...happiness isn't to be pursued, it is to be enjoyed. Like life.”
― Pete Dunne, Bird Droppings

“We can believe what we choose. We are answerable for what we choose to believe.”
― John Henry Newman

“A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault.”
― John Henry Newman

“Good is never accomplished except at the cost of those who do it, truth never breaks through except through the sacrifice of those who spread it.”
― John Henry Newman

“Evil has no substance of its own, but is only the defect, excess, perversion, or corruption of that which has substance.”
― John Henry Newman

“To be deep in history is to cease to be a Protestant.”
― John Henry Newman

“Lead, Kindly Light, amidst th'encircling gloom,
Lead Thou me on!
The night is dark, and I am far from home,
Lead Thou me on!
Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see
The distant scene; one step enough for me.
I was not ever thus, nor prayed that Thou
Shouldst lead me on;
I loved to choose and see my path; but now
Lead Thou me on!
I loved the garish day, and, spite of fears,
Pride ruled my will. Remember not past years!
So long Thy power hath blest me, sure it still
Will lead me on.
O’er moor and fen, o’er crag and torrent, till
The night is gone,
And with the morn those angel faces smile,
Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile!
Meantime, along the narrow rugged path,
Thyself hast trod,
Lead, Saviour, lead me home in childlike faith,
Home to my God.
To rest forever after earthly strife
In the calm light of everlasting life.”
― John Henry Newman

“Without self-knowledge you have no root in yourselves personally; you may endure for a time, but under affliction or persecution your faith will not last. This is why many in this age (and in every age) become infidels, heretics, schismatics, disloyal despisers of the Church. They cast off the form of truth, because it never has been to them more than a form. They endure not, because they never have tasted that the Lord is gracious; and they never have had experience of His power and love, because they have never known their own weakness and need.”
― John Henry Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons

“The world then is the enemy of our souls; first, because, however innocent its pleasures, and praiseworthy its pursuits may be, they are likely to engross us, unless we are on our guard: and secondly, because in all its best pleasures, and noblest pursuits, the seeds of sin have been sown; an enemy hath done this; so that it is most difficult to enjoy the good without partaking of the evil also.”
― John Henry Newman, Works of John Henry Newman

“And this one thing at least is certain; whatever history teaches, whatever it omits, whatever it exaggerates or extenuates, whatever it says and unsays, at least the Christianity of history is not Protestantism. If ever there were a safe truth, it is this.”
― John Henry Newman, An Essay On the Development Of Christian Doctrine: Theology

“Nothing is more common in an age like this, when books abound, than to fancy that the gratification of a love of reading is real study.”
― John Henry Newman

“Leisure is only possible when we are at one with ourselves. We tend to overwork as a means of self-escape, as a way of trying to justify our existence.”
― Josef Pieper, Leisure: The Basis of Culture

“The inmost significance of the exaggerated value which is set upon hard work appears to be this: man seems to mistrust everything that is effortless; he can only enjoy, with a good conscience, what he has acquired with toil and trouble; he refused to have anything as a gift.”
― Josef Pieper, Leisure: The Basis of Culture

“The vacancy left by absence of worship is filled by mere killing of time and by boredom, which is directly related to inability to enjoy leisure; for one can only be bored if the spiritual power to be leisurely has been lost. There is an entry in Baudelaire... "One must work, if not from taste then at least from despair. For, to reduce everything to a single truth: work is less boring than pleasure.”
― Josef Pieper, Leisure: The Basis of Culture

“The restoration of man’s inner eyes can hardly be expected in this day and age — unless, first of all, one were willing and determined simply to exclude from one’s realm of life all those inane and contrived but titillating illusions incessantly generated by the entertainment industry.”
― Josef Pieper

“A man who needs the unusual to make him "wonder" shows that he has lost the capacity to find the true answer to the wonder of being. The itch for sensation, even though disguised in the mask of Boheme, is a sure indication of a bourgeois mind and a deadened sense of wonder.”
― josef pieper, Leisure: The Basis of Culture

“Divine worship means the same thing where time is concerned, as the temple where space is concerned. "Temple" means... that a particular piece of ground is specially reserved, and marked off from the remainder of the land which is used either for agriculture or habitation... Similarly in divine worship a certain definite space of time is set aside from working hours and days... and like the space allotted to the temple, is not used, is withdrawn from all merely utilitarian ends.”
― Josef Pieper, Leisure: The Basis of Culture

“Only the silent hear and those who do not remain silent do not hear.” —Josef Pieper”
― Donald Haggerty, Contemplative Provocations: Brief, Concentrated Observations on Aspects of a Life with God

“The contemplation of revealed truth is a disturbing element in Christian philosophy though a very beautiful one, for it means that the framework of philosophy is widened, and, above all, it can never rest satisfied with the flat, one-dimensional "harmonies" of rationalism. That is the moment when a Christian philosophy, striking upon the rock of divine truth, foams and boils; and that is its unique privilege.”
― Josef Pieper, Leisure: The Basis of Culture