Doe Quotes - Page 226

Suffering itself does less afflict the senses than the apprehension of suffering.

As a test of the closeness of your relationship with the world, sex could never be a patch on being murdered. (That's when someone really does risk his life for you.)

Love never offers to anyone wings so easy that he does not hold him back with his other hand.

Cupid is naked and does not like artifices contrived by beauty.

For what concerns diversity of rites in the sacred liturgy, the Apostolic See has always made its position clear: not only it does not condemn diversity, but it eagerly and willingly grants to each nation the right to keep and preserve the legitimate customs and traditions of its forbears.

Thus it is that Pope Innocent III states [De Consuetudine] that, it is necessary to obey the Pope in all things as long as he, himself, does not go against the universal customs of the Church, but should he go against the universal customs of the Church, 'he need not be followed' . . .

A Christian who does not pray for those who govern is not a good Christian.

The crucifix does not signify defeat or failure. It reveals to us the Love that overcomes evil and sin.

Charity that does not change the situation of the poor isn't enough.

We are in front of a global scandal of around one billion - one billion people who still suffer from hunger today. We cannot look the other way and pretend this does not exist. The food available in the world is enough to feed everyone.

The security of faith does not make us motionless or close us off, but sends us forth to bear witness and to dialogue with all people.

How does St. Joseph exercise his role as protector? Discreetly, humbly and silently, but with an unfailing presence and utter fidelity, even when he finds it hard to understand.

A theologian who does not love art, poetry, music and nature can be dangerous. Blindness and deafness toward the beautiful are not incidental; they necessarily are reflected in his theology.

Without the Eucharist, the Church simply does not exist.

Working lives are for the state to influence. Unemployment makes people unhappy. So does instability.

It does not follow, that because a particular work of art succeeds in charming us, its creator also deserves our admiration.

We should try to succeed by merit, not by favor. He who does well will always have patrons enough. [Lat., Virtute ambire oportet, non favitoribus. Sat habet favitorum semper, qui recte facit.]

Between knowledge of what really exists and ignorance of what does not exist lies the domain of opinion. It is more obscure than knowledge, but clearer than ignorance.

What is natural does not have to be a representation of something. I'm now working on a thing that is a reconstruction of a starry sky, and yet I'm making it without a given from nature. Someone who says he uses a theme from nature can be right, but also someone who says he uses nothing at all.

He who does not fear death cares naught for threats.

True faith does not so much attempt to manipulate God to do our will as it does to position us to do his will.

God does not seem impressed by size or power or wealth. Faith is what he wants, and the heroes who emerge are heroes of faith, not strength or wealth.

I had insecurities and fears like everybody does, and I got over it. But I was interested in the parts of me that struggled with those things.

A lot of modernism does seem to come out of a fear of being thought an ordinary storyteller. So they tell it backwards and they tell it in the present tense and they cut loose the pages and shuffle them around - all that kind of stuff.

If a coin comes down heads, that means that the possibility of its coming down tails has collapsed. Until that moment the two possibilities were equal. But on another world, it does come down tails. And when that happens, the two worlds split apart.