"In addition to my other numerous acquaintances, I have one more intimate confidant. My depression is the most faithful mistress I have known -- no wonder, then, that I return the love."

-- Søren Kierkegaard

"Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see."

-Arthur Schopenhauer

"The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried."

-- G.K. Chesterton

"Thanksgiving Day comes, by statute, once a year; to the honest person, it comes as frequently as the heart of gratitude will allow."

--Edward Sandford Martin

"The folly of mistaking a paradox for a discovery, a metaphor for a proof, a torrent of verbiage for a spring of capital truths, and oneself for an oracle, is inborn in us."

-- Paul Valery, 1895, French critic & poet (1871 - 1945)

"The only difference between the Democrats and the Republicans is that the Democrats allow the poor to be corrupt, too."

-- Oscar Levant

"In the beginning the church was a fellowship of men and women centering on the living Christ. Then the church moved to Greece, where it became a philosophy. Then it moved to Rome, where it became an institution. Next, it moved to Europe, where it became a culture. And, finally, it moved to America, where it became an enterprise."

-- Richard Halverson, former Chaplain of the United States Senate

"I have held many things in my hands, and have lost them all; but whatever I have placed in God's hands, that I still possess."

-- Martin Luther

"Christianity is a battle, not a dream."

-- Wendell Phillips (1811-1884)

"The man who smiles when things go wrong has thought of someone to blame it on."

--Robert Bloch

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber-barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber-baron's cruelty may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."

-- C.S. Lewis

"You are Christian only so long as you constantly pose critical questions to the society you live in, so long as you emphasize the need of conversion both for yourself and for the world, so long as you in no way let yourself become established in the situation of the world, so long as you stay unsatisfied with the status quo and keep saying that a new world is yet to come. You are Christian only when you believe you have a role to play in the realization of the new kingdom, and when you urge everyone you meet with holy unrest to make haste so that the promise might soon be fulfilled. So long as you live as a Christian you keep looking for a new order, a new structure, a new life."

-- Henri Nouwen

"The truth isn't the truth until people believe you, and they can't believe you if they don't know what you're saying, and they can't know what you're saying if they don't listen to you, and they won't listen to you if you're not interesting, and you won't be interesting unless you say things imaginatively, originally, freshly."

-- Bill Bernbach

"The wilderness constantly reminds me that wholeness is not about perfection.... I have been astonished to see how nature uses devastation to stimulate new growth, slowly but persistently healing her own wounds. Wholeness does not mean perfection: it means embracing brokenness as an integral part of life. Knowing this gives me hope that human wholeness---mine, yours, ours---need not be a utopian dream, if we can use devastation as a seedbed for new life."

-- Parker Palmer

"He attacked everything in life with a mix of extraordinary genius and naive incompetence, and it was often difficult to tell which was which."

-- Douglas Adams

"Nice is highly overrated."

--Marcus Baker

"There's a whiff of the lynch mob or the lemming migration about any overlarge concentration of like-thinking individuals, no matter how virtuous their cause."

-- P.J. O'Rourke

"If people never did silly things, nothing intelligent would ever get done."

--Ludwig Wittgenstein

"One of the few good things about modern times: If you die horribly on television, you will not have died in vain. You will have entertained us."

-- Kurt Vonnegut

"The Holy Spirit of the eternal God has come. The Spirit is here: living in us, sanctifying us, strengthening us, consoling us…. The center of all reality, the innermost heart of all infinity, the love of the all-holy God has become our center, our heart. True and absolute reality now lives in our nothingness; the strength of God vitalizes our weakness: eternal life lives in mortal human beings. The only thing that nightfall really means now is that we cannot grasp the meaning of the day that has dawned on us since Pentecost—the day that will see no sunset."

-- Karl Rahner, SJ