Letter from a Birmingham Jail (Martin Luther King)
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly”.
Lying Awake (Mark Salzman)
“In the beginning we all feel a bit like imposters in our capes and veils and being called ‘sister’. But don’t worry about it — just act like you think a nun should when you’re not sure what to do, and you’ll find that through grace and love you become one.”
Out of the Silent Planet (C. S. Lewis)
“A pleasure is full grown only when it is remembered. When you and I met, the meeting was over very shortly, it was nothing. Now it is growing something as we remember it, what will it be when I remember it as I lie down to die, what it makes in me all my days till then – that is the real meeting.”
Perelandra (C. S. Lewis)
“The world is so much larger than I thought. I thought we went along paths–but it seems there are no paths. The going itself is the path.”
That Hideous Strength (C. S. Lewis)
“There are a dozen views about everything until you know the answer. Then there’s never more than one.”
Traitor’s Purse (Margaret Allingham)
“His mistaken belief in his own superiority cut him off from reality as completely as if he were living in a colored glass jar.”
Many Dimensions (Charles Williams)
“For as you cannot know any study but by learning it, or gain any virtue but by practicing it, so you cannot be anything but by becoming it. And that sounds obvious enough, doesn’t it? And yet… by becoming one thing a man ceases to be what he was, and no one but he can tell how tragic that change may be.”
The Place of the Lion (Charles Williams)
“No mind was so good that it did not need another mind to counter and equal it, and to save it from conceit and blindness and bigotry and folly,”
The Greater Trumps (Charles Williams)
It’s said that the shuffling of the cards is the earth, and the pattering of the cards is the rain, and the beating of the cards is the wind, and the pointing of the cards is the fire. That’s of the four suits. But the Greater Trumps, it’s said, are the meaning of all process and the measure of the everlasting dance.
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (John Le Carré)
“Don’t you think it’s time to recognize that there is as little worth on your side as there is on mine?”
The Honourable Schoolboy (John Le Carré)
“What else has a journalist to do these days, after all, but report life’s miseries?”
Smiley’s People (John Le Carré)
“You just happened to put your hand to your face and find it damp and you wondered what the hell Christ bothered to die for, if He ever died at all.”
The Hobbit (J. R. R. Tolkien)
“It is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay. Small acts of kindness and love.”
The Fellowship of the Ring (J. R. R. Tolkien)
“So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All you have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to you”.
The Two Towers (J. R. R. Tolkien)
“I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend.”
The Lord of the Rings (J. R. R. Tolkien)
“All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
Sherlock Holmes Complete (Arthur Conan Doyle)
“When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth”
The Assault (Harry Mulisch)
“Hate is the darkness, that’s no good. And yet we’ve got to hate Fascists, and that’s considered perfectly all right. How is that possible? It’s because we hate them in the name of the light, I guess, whereas they hate only in the name of darkness. We hate hate itself, and for this reason our hate is better than theirs. But that’s why it’s more difficult for us. For them everything is very simple, but for us it’s more complicated. We’ve got to become a little bit like them in order to fight them so we become a little bit unlike ourselves. But they don’t have that problem; they can do away with us without any qualms.”
Body and Soul (Frank Conroy)
“What you are looking for is authentication… Forget about authentication. When it comes to writing music, all you can do is sign on for a way of life, and do the work. Do the work for its own sake.”
Dream Days (Kenneth Graham)
“Truly wise men called on each element alike to minister to their joy, and while the touch of sun-bathed air, the fragrance of garden soil, the ductible qualities of mud, and the spark-whirling rapture of playing with fire, had each their special charm, they did not overlook the bliss of getting their feet wet.
The Plague (Albert Camus)
“I have no idea what’s awaiting me, or what will happen when this all ends. For the moment I know this: there are sick people and they need curing.”
Silence (Shusaku Endo)
“It was to be trampled on by men that I was born into this world. It was to share men’s pain that I carried my cross”.
War and Peace (Leo Tolstoy)
“We can know only that we know nothing. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom.”
Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
“There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one’s own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. If he flew them he was crazy and didn’t have to; but if he didn’t want to he was sane and had to”.