Derek Cook > Recent Status Updates

The hood of books lies in being read. A book is made up of signs that speak of other signs, which in their turn speak of things. Without an eye to read them, a book contains signs that produce no concepts, therefore it is dumb. This library was perhaps born to save the books it houses, but now it lives to bury them.

I…find the most joyful delight in unraveling a nice, complicated knot.

No. You want a corpse, and to have it you need me to assume the guilt for other corpses.

But changing habit is not enough to erase from the soul the evil of heretical depravity, and so we are here now to find out what lurks in the recesses of your impenitent soul and what you did before arriving at this holy place.

[Aquinas] says “that the passions in themselves are not evil, but they must be governed by the will led by the rational soul.”

Did holiness consist in waiting for God to give us what His saints had promised, without trying to obtain it through earthly means? Now I know this is the case and why Dolcino erred: the order of things must not be transformed, even if we fervently hope for its transformation. - ie we can’t bring on the next “age “ or apocalypse ourselves, it is all in God’s timing and plans

“We are fragile creatures, I said to myself; even among these learned and devout monks the Evil One spreads petty envies, foments subtle hostilities, but all these are as smoke then dispersed by the strong wind of faith, the moment all gather in the name of the Father, and Christ descends into their midst.”

“His mouth was almost incapable of managing a smile, and altogether he gave the impression of dealing with the pain of existence out of some sort of distasteful duty.”

“Mortify your intelligence, learn to weep over the wounds of the Lord, throw away your books.”