Classic Quotes - Page 25

• It is customary to complain of the bustle and strenuousness of our epoch. But in truth the chief mark of our epoch is a profound laziness and fatigue; and the fact is that the real laziness is the cause of the apparent bustle.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Real, Profound, Causes

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.93, Simon and Schuster

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• We have entered a new phase of culture - we may call it the Age of the Cinema - in which the most amazing perfection of scientific technique is being devoted to purely ephemeral objects, without any consideration of their ultimate justification. It seems as though a new society was arising which will acknowledge no hierarchy of values, no intellectual authority, and no social or religious tradition, but which will live for the moment in a chaos of pure sensation.

  Christopher Dawson

  Religious, Perfection, Live In The Moment

  Christopher Dawson (2001). “Progress and Religion: An Historical Inquiry (The Works of Christopher Dawson)”, p.176, CUA Press

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• No civilisation, not even that of ancient Greece, has ever undergone such a continuous and profound process of change as Western Europe has done during the last 900 years. It is impossible to explain this fact in purely economic terms by a materialistic interpretation of history. The principle of change has been a spiritual one and the progress of Western civilisation is intimately related to the dynamic ethos of Western Christianity, which has gradually made Western man conscious of his moral responsibility and his duty to change the world.

  Christopher Dawson

  Spiritual, Responsibility, Men

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• People complain that the religious ground is unsure who have never compelled themselves to examine it with a tithe of the care spent on a contract; but they have taken current suggestions in a dreamy and hypnotised way. They will not attend, they will not force themselves to attend, gravely to the gravest things.... they read everything in a vagrant, browsing fashion. They turn on the most serious subjects the holiday, seaside, newspaper habit of mind

  Peter Forsyth

  Religious, Fashion, Taken

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• How often has not the parallel been drawn and the golden age of the Roman Empire, when the external brilliancy of life likewise dazzled the eye, notwithstanding that the social diagnosis could yield no other verdict than 'rotten to the very core'?

  Abraham Kuyper

  Eye, Yield, Age

  Abraham Kuyper (2009). “Lectures on Calvinism”, p.173, Cosimo, Inc.

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• The age of the proof is in decline, it is the hour of 'witness' that is coming, hour of the 'marturioa', very calm and very complete: a hope which seems close to being realised.

  Henri de Lubac

  Being Real, Age, Calm

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• The only influence that can really upset the injustice and iniquity of men is the power that breathes in the Christian tradition, renewing our participation in the Life that is the Light of men.

  Thomas Merton

  Christian, Men, Light

  Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.144, New Directions Publishing

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• To those who have no personal experience of this revolutionary aspect of Christian truth, but who see only the outer crust of dead, human conservatism that tends to form around the Church the way barnacles gather on the hull of a ship, all this talk about dynamism sounds foolish.

  Thomas Merton

  Christian, Church, Way

  Thomas Merton (2003). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.148, Shambhala Publications

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• Each individual Christian and each new age of the Church has to make this rediscovery, this return to the source of Christian life.

  Thomas Merton

  Christian, Age, Church

  Thomas Merton (2003). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.148, Shambhala Publications

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• The price that has to be paid for finding truly personal life is a very high one. It is a price in terms of the acceptance of responsibility. And the awareness of responsibility inevitably leads either to despair or to confession and grace.

  Paul Tournier

  Responsibility, Acceptance, Miracle

  "Reflections: a personal guide for life's most crucial questions".

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• Much is now being said about evangelism; but before we get effective evangelism, we have to get effective evangelists. Evangelism is useless unless it is the work of one devoted to God, willing and glad to suffer all things for God, penetrated by the attractiveness of God. New machinery, adaptations and adjustments, are not the first need... but more devoted, adoring, sacrificial souls.

  Evelyn Underhill

  Soul, Suffering, Firsts

  Evelyn Underhill (1960). “The Mount of Purification”

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• Of course, the whole Andy Kaufman angle was classic. I'm real proud of that. I mean that is something people are still talking about 20 years later, making movies about and that sort of thing. I mean not a day goes by that someone doesn't mention Andy Kaufman to me

  Jerry Lawler

  Real, Mean, Talking

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• But our energy woes are in many ways the result of classic market failures that can only be addressed through collective action, and government is the vehicle for collective action in a democracy.

  Sherwood Boehlert

  Government, Democracy, Energy

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• Ludlow....is probably the loveliest town in England with its hill of Georgian houses ascending from the river Teme to the great tower of the cross-shaped church, rising behind a classic market building.

  John Betjeman

  Rivers, House, Church

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• If you like eating meat but want to eat ethically, this is the book for you. From the hard-headed, clear-eyed, and sympathetic perspective of butchers who care deeply about the animals whose parts they sell, the customers who buy their meats, and the pleasures of eating, this book has much to teach. It’s an instant classic, making it clear why meat is part of the food revolution. I see it as the new Bible of meat aficionados and worth reading by all food lovers, meat-eating and not.

  Marion Nestle

  Reading, Book, Animal

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• To read great books does not mean one becomes ‘bookish’; it means that something of the terrible insight of Dostoyevsky, of the richly-charged imagination of Shakespeare, of the luminous wisdom of Goethe, actually passes into the personality of the reader; so that in contact with the chaos of ordinary life certain free and flowing outlines emerge, like the forms of some classic picture, endowing both people and things with a grandeur beyond what is visible to the superficial glance.

  John Cowper Powys

  Book, Mean, People

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• Tom Regan’s now classic Case for Animal Rights blends careful argument with intense moral concern. For two decades, where Regan has been taken seriously, animals have been better off and people have become better persons. This new edition is a welcome sign of this influence continuing.

  Holmes Rolston III

  Taken, Animal, Rights

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• Galactica has infinite possibilities. In fact, my character may be abnormal in the sense that she may be more independent than most of the women in classic space adventures.

  Maren Jensen

  Adventure, Character, Independent

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• We makeup artists are a unique bunch of people; we don't have the classic brain, the classic training, but we're creative, so we figure it out.

  Bobbi Brown

  Artist, Unique, Makeup

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• Anything John Stott says is worth listening to. Anything he writes is worth reading. Basic Christianity is not only a classic must-read for every believer; it is truly a blessing preserved on the written page for the enrichment of this generation and those to come.

  Anne Graham Lotz

  Reading, Writing, Blessing

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• We don't want to impose our solutions by force, we want to create a democratic space. We don't see armed struggle in the classic sense of previous guerrilla wars, that is as the only way and the only all-powerful truth around which everything is organized. In a war, the decisive thing is not the military confrontation but the politics at stake in the confrontation. We didn't go to war to kill or be killed. We went to war in order to be heard.

  Subcomandante Marcos

  Powerful, Military, War

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• Mack Bolan is a classic American hero. Readers like him and I feel very good about that.

  Don Pendleton

  Hero, Mack, Very Good

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• It's absurd to think of 'Pride and Prejudice,' this classic, beloved book, beset with a zombie uprising. The goal is to make you suspend your disbelief enough to allow you to get lost in the story and believe what you're reading for a while.

  Seth Grahame-Smith

  Believe, Book, Reading

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• This book is unique. I know of no other which so artfully tackles two of the greatest mysteries of modern science, quantum mechanics, and consciousness. It has long been suspected that these mysteries are somehow related: the authors’ treatment of this thorny and controversial issue is honest, wide-ranging, and immensely readable. The book contains some of the clearest expositions I have ever seen of the strange and paradoxical nature of the quantum world. Quantum Enigma is a pleasure to read, and I am sure it is destined to become a classic.

  George Greenstein

  Book, Unique, Two

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• It is the cult of self that is killing the United States. This cult has within it the classic traits of psychopaths: superficial charm, grandiosity and self-importance ; a need for constant stimulation; a penchant for lying, deception and manipulation; and the incapacity for remorse or guilt.

  Chris Hedges

  Lying, Self, Deception

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