Existence alone had never been enough for him; he had always wanted more. Perhaps it was only from the force of his desires that he had regarded himself as a man to whom more was permitted than to others.
Where we are from... [s]tories are factual. If a farmer is declared a music virtuoso by the state, everyone had better start calling him maestro. And secretly, he'd be wise to start practicing the piano. For us, the story is more important than the person. If a man and his story are in conflict, it is the man who must change.
Fortunate are those who take the first step. Someday people will realize that men and women are capable of speaking the language of the angels - that all of us are possessed of the gifts of the Holy Spirit and that we can perform miracles, cure, prophesy, and understand.
Men die nightly in their beds, wringing the hands of ghostly confessors ... on account of the hideousness of mysteries which will not suffer themselves to be revealed.
Think of all those ages through which men have had the courage to die, and then remember that we have actually fallen to talking about having the courage to live.
That little word 'we' I mistrust and here's why:
No man of another can say, 'He is I.'
Behind all agreement lies something amiss
All seeming accord cloaks a lurking abyss.
A man must thank his defects, and stand in some terror of his talents. A transcendent talent draws so largely on his forces as tolame him; a defect pays him revenues on the other side.
It requires twenty years for a man to rise from the vegetable state in which he is within his mother's womb, and from the pure animal state which is the lot of his early childhood, to the state when the maturity of reason begins to appear. It has required thirty centuries to learn a little about his structure. It would need eternity to learn something about his soul. It takes an instant to kill him.