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

“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. 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

“Once, there was a little country boy who was orphaned at an early age. He never learned to read. His parents had left him a heavy prayer book as his inheritance. On the Day of Atonement he brought it to the synagogue, laid it on the reading table, and burst into tears, crying out, ‘O Lord of All Creation! I do not know how to pray, nor even what to say—Here! I give thee the entire prayer book!’ ” David looked up and smiled at Pawel with raised eyebrows. “That’s it?” Pawel asked. “Yes. It’s very strong, isn’t it? Stronger than it seems.” “Like a bomb that bursts after a short delay.” “You do understand! But more like a flower that turns into seed that falls into the ground of the mind, and sprouts and bears its fruit in time.” “Do you think the little boy was closer to God than the great scholars are?” “If his heart was open.” “Do you think an intellectual can have an open heart?” “Of course. But it’s rare.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Sophia House: A Novel

“Within the space of a few hours he had prayed the prayers of the burnt men, worshipped and communicated at Mass like an ordinary Polish Catholic, counseled a woman like a sage, bowed like a Byzantine, instructed a non-Christian like a scholastic, and was now swiftly relapsing into the convoluted self-absorption that was his habitual and very modern self! He shook his head free, got to his feet, and went to make a glass of tea.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Sophia House: A Novel

“When he came among us, it was to teach us that we are greater than we conceive ourselves to be. Each person is his icon. To burn even one, to hurt even the least of human beings, is to assault God. He shows us his face, and to our shock it is a human face.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Sophia House: A Novel

“David went on. “If a person does not have another with whom he can speak in this manner, then he is condemned to stare at his own reflection.” “So, is this wrong? Should we not know ourselves?” “Can you know yourself, really, in a reflection? A reflection is an inverted image, and flat. May I put it another way, Pan Tarnowski? We tend to experience the self as the center of all existence. Thus, I risk turning everything and everyone around me—oh, you see, I said around me, as if all that is not me merely revolves about me.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Sophia House: A Novel

“A state of pure being is speaking and listening simultaneously.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Sophia House: A Novel

“Language can give us prayer and poetry and song and words of love to offer to another. Yet language can fall to the lowest level, like a noble servant put to degraded uses to increase the master’s profit. By reducing him to the lowest level of service, the master in fact degrades himself more than his servant.” “Like a philosopher forced to shovel manure in a barn.” “Not exactly. Shoveling manure can be a noble act, if it is genuine service. I mean, rather, that a philosopher might be forced to sell evil things for his master. Lies, for example.” “Or a man might be forced to strip himself naked, so that eyes can devour him as an object of interest or desire.” David shuddered. “Yes, like that. Or stripped naked as an object to be viewed in a propaganda film.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Sophia House: A Novel

“Pawel frowned and laid his book on the table. “An old painter once told me something similar. He said that if symbols are corrupted, concepts are corrupted, and then we lose the ability to understand things as they are. Then we become more vulnerable to the deformation of our perceptions.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Sophia House: A Novel

“So you believe that what a man says must be backed up with his life.” “Yes, if it is to have authority. This is why we must take care with our words. A word changes existence. We must protect the purity of language, for it carries the sacred from one to another.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Sophia House: A Novel

“He warned himself that he should not mistake for love the impulse to escape loneliness. An icon in the heart could degenerate into an idol.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Sophia House: A Novel

“But I think nature is no mother, killing as she breeds, for saplings suck their life from blood-fed soil. She is a queen who leaves a heap of corpses in her train. And man, her selfish child, thinks of nothing other than his gain. Armies of them erect their forts and barns.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Sophia House: A Novel

“ANDREI How much can a soul be taxed? How much this soul endure? I am a man of peace, but there is a killer sleeping in my soul, one who in a moment of madness might grab the tools of evil in an attempt to defeat evil. Thus I would find myself doubly defeated!”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Sophia House: A Novel

“ANDREI It is the artist’s danger, being master of the form, to forget that he is poor, to think he is the master of the invisible reality, which this reflection represents.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Sophia House: A Novel

“ANDREI You speak of courage, but tell me this—who is stronger: one who is ruled by fear and must hold a weapon to prove his false invincibility? Or one who stands powerless with peace reigning in his soul?”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Sophia House: A Novel

“Of course, I do not know much about the designs of the dybbuks, but this man wishes to abolish the distinctions between good and evil. Does he think they are mirror images of the same ultimate divine power?” “It would seem so.” “Pan Tarnowski, this is an idea that originates in the other side.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Sophia House: A Novel

“I am not called to an unusual work, and certainly not for God.” “Does any man know himself so well that he can make such a statement with certainty?”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Sophia House: A Novel

“Papa went to work as a clerk in a law office. There was more food, many lovely feasts. Sometimes Pawel laughed, and whenever that happened everyone commented, stroked him, cooed over him, and there was happiness in the apartment. Even Papa smiled, and from across the room offered his hand, begging with his eyes that Pawel would come to him. But he did not. He went to his bedroom and read a book, under the safer sheets. He learned that a certain kind of silence was power. People flowed around it like a river around an island. It made some people stay away. And though it made others come too close, trying to get inside, they eventually gave up.”
― 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