Sophia House Quotes

“The pillars of wisdom are these: humility, powerlessness, poverty, loneliness, sickness, rejection, and abandonment.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Sophia House: A Novel

“It is very difficult”, he said aloud. “It is very difficult for a man to believe that God loves him, if he does not know the love of another human being.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Sophia House: A Novel

“He told me that no human love would ever fill the hunger within me. Though every genuine love is from God, it is an incarnation, a reflection. In this world it will always be imperfect. His love is perfection. It contains everything.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Sophia House

“He had met so many like that in the camps, in universities, in seats of power, and even in the place where he now lived. All of them felt compelled to seek solutions, and in doing so they tried to force their will upon others. The worst would try to force it upon mankind. They would make space for humanity by destroying a portion of humanity. Like their forerunners, they would in the end make the world more bereft of space and time. They looked at the sky, but it was meaningless to them, empty and flat. They killed hope because they had no true hope.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Sophia House: A Novel

“What is civilization?” she snorted. “Just a little village that got too big and too bold. So the enemy village comes along and rams pointed sticks into all the babies and takes the women back for slaves. And the men run away, except the foolish boys who throw themselves on the invader’s knives. Then the winner steals all the useful things, burns the houses and temples, and goes back to his own village for a big supper and a big sleep. After raping somebody for a nightcap, of course. That’s civilization, boy.” “You”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Sophia House: A Novel

“For the first time in his life he understood that he was like all men, and all were like him. They too were called to love, and they too feared love. Germans, Russians, and Poles, Gentiles and Jews, good men and bad, rich and poor—all clinging to their weapons of defense, all dwelling in terror of absolute nakedness.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Sophia House: A Novel

“Not being warm is a training?” “Yes, it is.” “It seems a very cold religion.” “Things are warmer on the inside than the outside. There are moments when the face of the Beautiful One is before us, in the eyes of the heart. There is an embrace that is all Love. It is worth everything—everything.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Sophia House: A Novel

“Pawel withdrew into his own thoughts, reflecting on the fact that saints and mystics also spoke of suffering, darkness, and the agony of interior crosses. For a Christian, these were an indispensable part of the rising toward God.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Sophia House: A Novel

“Many family men come to me. If you were a father of children you would know that reassurance is necessary from time to time. But if one protects too much—if the child is not helped to learn his lessons, to overcome his fears—he will need a greater and greater dose of this medicine of consolations. He will not grow. Could it be that our Lord is asking you to grow very quickly? It seems he trusts you sufficiently to give you this test.” It”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Sophia House: A Novel

“You and he make this union of trust together. Trust is not magic. Trust is built slowly, slowly, with patience and care.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Sophia House: A Novel

“Life is different now. I do not have time. If I work twelve hours a day, six days a week, it is because I wish to give him a good life. I love him.” “He does not know it. Love is a word. It must have flesh. He will suffer.” “Life is suffering”, said Papa. “Yes, life is trouble. But we should not make more than is our due.” “You do not understand.” “I understand very well. It is because we have become poor”, Grandfather said to Papa. “You do not like to be poor, and who can blame you. But it is not so bad to be poor if there is food and love. Better to be poor than a rich orphan. Listen to me, my son.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Sophia House: A Novel

“This in turn leaves the soul more frustrated and lonely than ever. Thus the primal lie begets destruction—worst of all, it does so in the name of love.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Sophia House: A Novel

“Is this, then, the source of the primal wound—the sense of fatherlessness? The wound makes one vulnerable to a lie: you have no father, there is no fatherhood, the universe is abandoned. The wound begets loneliness. Loneliness seeks relief in the theater of the imagination. The imagination ferments a romance. Then romance, impelled by the generative powers of the body, gradually degenerates into erotic fantasy.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Sophia House: A Novel

“Be at peace, my little one, said a voice without compulsion. It was necessary for you to experience this. Recognize that voice and do not again listen to it. Do not converse with it. The deceiver wishes to shake you in his teeth. Come to me, come always to me and trust.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Sophia House: A Novel

“In my faith we believe there is only one answer to the blows that evil inflicts on us. The answer is not a rational argument. The answer is a man. This man is God himself suffering with us, dying with us, so that he might draw us up to the Most High, confounding all the devices of the enemy.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Sophia House: A Novel

“You ask why God permits evil”, Pawel said. “I do not know the answer to this. There are arguments one could make to explain it, but they always lack something—something elusive that may be far beyond our ability to comprehend. Would we misinterpret it, even if we could see? All attempts to understand evil fail in the end.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Sophia House: A Novel

“A degraded word is a blow to the mind. A true, illuminating word is a seed. The fruitfulness of the seed depends on the soil in which it is planted.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Sophia House: A Novel

“But returning to our subject”, David continued with a smile. “For me, the way to reduce misinterpretation when speaking with another person is to keep before the eyes of my heart a reverence for the mystery within him, his unknown mission, his identity hidden in the mind of the Most High.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Sophia House: A Novel

“Tell me, Pan Tarnowski, did your father not teach you to discern good from evil?”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Sophia House: A Novel

“David dropped his eyes. In a low voice, he said, “One can be alone, even in a household full of people who speak incessantly.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Sophia House: A Novel

“Ah no, you desire the humblest coin, and stamped upon it the word Beauty. MONK Long past are the days when once I thought this coin would ransom the heart of a dark age.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Sophia House: A Novel

“do not understand why death is still at work. I think its time is short, and it will fiercely fight to the last gasp. It is this gasp we now endure. Until it is finished, evil will go on casting insults into the secret face of God and use us too!”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Sophia House: A Novel

“and hearing only silence, the heart must erupt in agony: “Where is God? Where is God?” And as the years of silence spread, while the ravager despoils at will, would you or I see the corruption of a child and not take arms? Or watch our lifetime’s work erupt in flame at the whims of blind men, and not be tempted to reach for a sword?”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Sophia House: A Novel

“He knows the human heart cannot resist a cry of “Why” when innocence is ruined;”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Sophia House: A Novel

“Perhaps, after all, his anguish was so persuasive that it could eclipse the most real things and make them appear as shadows, and at the same time make shadows into an appearance of the real.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Sophia House: A Novel

“The serpent hated the light and knew he had no power to hurt it, except through its creatures.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Sophia House: A Novel

“Words have power”, he said intensely. “They have a life of their own. They shift the balance of the world.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Sophia House: A Novel

“You struggle against despair, which is perhaps the greatest temptation of our century. All manner of evil flows from this primeval wound in man, this conviction that he is absolutely alone, this terror that his sufferings are meaningless. Is this not also your fear?”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Sophia House: A Novel

“A soul must be well seasoned to discern among voices. There are many voices that come to us from the unknown, and the Evil One is capable of disguises. It is important always to ask which voice speaks the truth with love.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Sophia House: A Novel

“We wish to be worthy of being saved”, Father Andrei continued. “Which is another way of saying that we, every one of us, whether we know it or not, wish to be our own god, that is, to save ourselves. We want paradise without his Cross, forgetting that the Cross is the only way to reenter the original harmony we lost in the Fall of Man. This is the narrow gate.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Sophia House: A Novel