“We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate for having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein do we err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with the extension of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings: they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.”

“I don't deny," he said, "that there should be priests to remind men that they will one day die. I only say that at certain strange epochs it is necessary to have another kind of priests, called poets, actually to remind men that they are not dead yet.”

“All virtues have a shadow.”

“Maybe the devil in human beings isn't the reflection of the devil, perhaps the devil is only a reflection of the savagery and brutality of our kind. Maybe what we've done is create the devil in our own image”

“The gospel is absurd and the life of Jesus is meaningless unless we believe that He lived, died, and rose again with but one purpose in mind: to make brand-new creation. Not to make people with better morals but to create a community of prophets and professional lovers, men and women who would surrender to the mystery of the fire of the Spirit that burns within, who would live in ever greater fidelity to the omnipresent Word of God, who would enter into the center of it all, the very heart and mystery of Christ, into the center of the flame that consumes, purifies, and sets everything aglow with peace, joy, boldness, and extravagant, furious love. This, my friend, is what it really means to be a Christian.”

“I cannot describe Or explain the speed of light Or what makes thunder roll across the sky And I could never theorize about the universe’s size Or explain why some men live and some men die I can’t even guess I would never profess To know why you are here with me And I cannot comprehend How numbers have no end The things you understand, I can’t conceive Infinity + One Is still infinity. And no matter how I try I’m bound by gravity. But the things I thought I knew Changed the minute I met you. It seems I’m weightless And I’m endless after all. Weightless and endless. Timeless and restless. So light that I’ll never fall. Weightless and endless. Hopelessly breathless. I guess I knew nothing at all.”

“I've been hurt so bad and I still love so hard. I admire my heart for that.”

“One of the marks of a truly great mind, I had discovered, is the ability to feign stupidity on demand.”