"We must recognize that the death of God is a historical event: God has died in our time, in our history, in our existence."

~ Thomas J Altizer, Associate Professor of Religion, Emory University, Atlanta, Time 22 Oct 65

"God was more exciting then than he is now."

~ Anonymous, Child's comment on the Old Testament, quoted by Gerald Kennedy The Seven Worlds of the Minister Harper & Row 68

"May the Babe of Bethlehem be yours to tend;/May the Boy of Nazareth be yours for friend;/May the Man of Galilee his healing send;/May the Christ of Calvary his courage lend;/May the Risen Lord his presence send;/And his holy angels defend you to the end."

~ Anonymous, "Pilgrim's Prayer," found in Oberammergau, West Germany, 80

"From the cowardice that dare not face new truths,/From the laziness that is contented with half truth,/From the arrogance that thinks it knows all truth,/Good Lord, deliver me."

~ Anonymous, Kenyan prayer, quoted in George Appleton comp The Oxford Book of Prayer Oxford 85

"Oh priest of Jesus Christ, celebrate this Mass as if it were your first Mass, your only Mass, your last Mass."

~ Anonymous, Sign in sacristy of Mother Teresa Hospice, NYC, 86

"I sought my soul but my soul I could not see. I sought my God but my God eluded me. I sought my brother - and I found all three."

~ Anonymous, Quoted by London Church News Service May 86

"It was the spring of life ... the beginning, when everything had total newness, when all things were possible, when duty entered into [the Disciples'] lives."

~ Antony, Russian Orthodox Archbishop of England, Meditation on beginning of Christianity, Lambeth Conference 24 Jul 78

"It was when faith exploded, when hope was fragrant and when they discovered the scope, the scale, the width and the depth of love they had never suspected."

~ Antony, Russian Orthodox Archbishop of England, Meditation on beginning of Christianity, Lambeth Conference 24 Jul 78

"Health is the state about which medicine has nothing to say: Sanctity is the state about which theology has nothing to say."

~ W H Auden, Atlantic May 70

"In a world of prayer, we are all equal in the sense that each of us is a unique person, with a unique perspective on the world, a member of a class of one."

~ W H Auden, Recalled on his death 28 Sep 73

"If time were the wicked sheriff in a horse opera, I'd pay for riding lessons and take his gun away."

~ W H Auden, Lines used as part of offertory at his requiem in Cathedral Church of St John the Divine, NYC, 3 Oct 73

"In the deserts of the heart/Let the healing fountains start,/In the prison of his days,/Teach the free man how to praise."

~ W H Auden, "In Memory of W B Yeats," lines inscribed on Auden's stone in Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey 2 Oct 74

"Conscience is the perfect interpreter of life."

~ Karl Barth, The Word of God and the Word of Man Harper 57

"Man can certainly keep on lying ... but he cannot make truth falsehood. He can certainly rebel ... but he can accomplish nothing which abolishes the choice of God."

~ Karl Barth, Recalled on his death 9 Dec 68

"Man can certainly flee from God ... but he cannot escape him. He can certainly hate God and be hateful to God, but he cannot change into its opposite the eternal love of God which triumphs even in his hate."

~ Karl Barth, Recalled on his death 9 Dec 68

"The Christian tradition was passed on to me as a great rich mixture, a bouillabaisse of human imagination and wonder brewed from the richness of individual lives."

~ Mary Catherine Bateson, With a Daughter's Eye Morrow 84

"Obedience, judgment, witness ... these are the signposts to our salvation, in all the perplexities and busyness of our life."

~ Stephen Bayne, Executive Officer, Anglican Communion, Report to Archbishop of Canterbury Easter 63

"The grace of God is courtesy."

~ Hilaire Belloc, Quoted by Monica Baldwin I Leap over the Wall Rinehart 50

"We are meant to be addicted to God, but we develop secondary addictions that temporarily appear to fix our problem."

~ Edward M Berckman, Episcopal priest, "Substitutes for God" Living Church 15 Feb 87

"No love that in a family dwells, no caroling in frosty air,/Nor all the steeple-shaking bells/Can with this single Truth compare - /That God was Man in Palestine/And lives today in Bread and Wine."

~ John Betjeman, Collected Poems Houghton Mifflin 58

"We thank you, Almighty God, for the gift of water. Over it the Holy Spirit moved in the beginning of creation. Through it you led the children of Israel out of their bondage in Egypt into the land of promise. In it your Son Jesus received the baptism of John [and] we are buried with Christ in his death. By it we share in his resurrection. Through it we are reborn by the Holy Spirit."

~ Book of Common Prayer, New baptismal rite for the Episcopal Church, Seabury 77

"I believe that God prays in us and through us, whether we are praying or not (and whether we believe in God or not). So, any prayer on my part is a conscious response to what God is already doing in my life."

~ Malcolm Boyd, Episcopal priest, Saturday Evening Post 27 Aug 66

"Prayer for many is like a foreign land. When we go there, we go as tourists. Like most tourists, we feel uncomfortable and out of place. Like most tourists, we therefore move on before too long and go somewhere else."

~ Robert McAfee Brown, Introduction to John B Coburn Prayer and Personal Religion Westminster 67

"In Jewry, the way which leads to that promised time, the way of man's contribution to ultimate fulfillment, is whenever one generation encounters the next, whenever the generation which has reached its full development transmits the teachings to the generation which is still in the process of developing, so that the teachings spontaneously waken to new life in the new generation."

~ Martin Buber, The Writings of Martin Buber Meridian 56

"God wants man to fulfill his commands as a human being and with the quality peculiar to human beings."

~ Martin Buber, The Writings of Martin Buber Meridian 56

"The law is not thrust upon man; it rests deep within him, to waken when the call comes."

~ Martin Buber, The Writings of Martin Buber Meridian 56

"God is the mysterium tremendum that appears and overthrows, but he is also the mystery of the self-evident, nearer to me than my I."

~ Martin Buber, Recalled on his death 13 Jun 65

"It is as impossible for man to demonstrate the existence of God as it would be for even Sherlock Holmes to demonstrate the existence of Arthur Conan Doyle."

~ Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC Harper & Row 73

"If it seems a childish thing to do, do it in remembrance that you are a child."

~ Frederick Buechner, On the Eucharist, p>Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC Harper & Row 73

"In his holy flirtation with the world, God occasionally drops a handkerchief. These handkerchiefs are called saints."

~ Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC Harper & Row 73

"Religion points to that area of human experience where in one way or another man comes upon mystery as a summons to pilgrimage."

~ Frederick Buechner, Summons to Pilgrimage privately published 84

"A belief may be larger than a fact. A faith that is overdefined is the very faith most likely to prove inadequate to the great moments of life."

~ Vannevar Bush, Science Is Not Enough Morrow 67

"You can't divorce religious belief and public service ... I've never detected any conflict between God's will and my political duty. If you violate one, you violate the other."

~ Jimmy Carter, 39th US President, To National Conference of Baptist Men, 16 Jun 78

"I never saw a contradiction between the ideas that sustain me and the ideas of that symbol, of that extraordinary figure [Jesus Christ]."

~ Fidel Castro, Quoted by Richard N Ostling "Castro Looks at Christianity" Time 30 Dec 85

"Whatever task God is calling us to, if it is yours it is mine, and if it is mine it is yours. We must do it together - or be cast aside together."

~ Howard Hewlett Clark, Anglican Archbishop of Rupert's Land, Anglicans, booklet published for Anglican Exhibition, 1964 NY World's Fair

"Hope arouses, as nothing else can arouse, a passion for the possible."

~ William Sloane Coffin Jr, Senior Minister, Riverside Church, NYC, Once to Every Man Atheneum 77, quoted in Christian Science Monitor 5 Jan 78

"It's too bad that one has to conceive of sports as being the only arena where risks are, [for] all of life is risk exercise. That's the only way to live more freely, and more interestingly."

~ William Sloane Coffin Jr, Senior Minister, Riverside Church, NYC, Once to Every Man Atheneum 77, quoted in Christian Science Monitor 5 Jan 78

"Father, we thank you, especially for letting me fly this flight ... for the privilege of being able to be in this position, to be in this wondrous place, seeing all these many startling, wonderful things that you have created."

~ L Gordon Cooper Jr, Prayer while orbiting the earth in a space capsule, quoted in NY Times 22 May 63

"All human beings have an innate need to hear and tell stories and to have a story to live by. ... religion, whatever else it has done, has provided one of the main ways of meeting this abiding need."

~ Harvey Cox, Professor of Divinity, Harvard, The Seduction of the Spirit Simon & Schuster 73

"There has never been a better raconteur than Jesus of Nazareth."

~ Harvey Cox, Professor of Divinity, Harvard, The Seduction of the Spirit Simon & Schuster 73

"Man does not bring to God's altar the stuff of nature in itself, in its initial structure, but something he has made and molded out of nature for the nourishment and the inspiration of men."

~ Wilford O Cross, Professor of Ethics and Moral Theology, Nashotah House Episcopal Seminary, Nashotah WI, Prologue to Ethics privately published 63

"Within this thin wafer of bread is caught up symbolically the labor of plow and of sowing, of harvest and threshing, of milling, of packing, of transportation, of financing, of selling and packaging. Man's industrial life is all there."

~ Wilford O Cross, Professor of Ethics and Moral Theology, Nashotah House Episcopal Seminary, Nashotah WI, On the Eucharist, p>Prologue to Ethics privately published 63

"Mindful of the fact you live in an agricultural country, I presume you know what an ass is. We read in the New Testament that our blessed Lord rode on an ass in triumph into the city of Jerusalem. Today the Lord rides on another ass: I myself."

~ Richard Cardinal Cushing, Archbishop of Boston, Preaching in the slums of Lima, Peru, Time 21 Aug 64

"Sleep is the best meditation."

~ Dalai Lama, People 10 Sep 79

"What you are is God's gift to you; what you make of it is your gift to God."

~ Anthony Dalla Villa, Roman Catholic priest, Eulogy at memorial Mass for Andy Warhol at NYC's St Patrick's Cathedral 1 Apr 87

"Death gives life its fullest reality."

~ Anthony Dalla Villa, Roman Catholic priest, Eulogy at memorial Mass for Andy Warhol at NYC's St Patrick's Cathedral 1 Apr 87

"The only remedy for a false view of the Cross is the Cross itself."

~ H B Dehqani-Tafti, exiled President Bishop, Episcopal Church in Jerusalem and the Middle East, The Hard Awakening Seabury 81

"Faith must not be slow to reason, nor reason to adore."

~ Lakdasa J de Mel, Anglican Metropolitan of India, Sermon closing 10th Lambeth Conference, St Paul's Cathedral, London, 25 Aug 68

"A man does a lot of praying in an enemy prison. Prayer, even more than sheer thought, is the firmest anchor."

~ Jeremiah A Denton Jr, Quoted by George Esper and the Associated Press The Eyewitness History of the Vietnam War 1961-75 Ballantine 83

"I have learned that human existence is essentially tragic. It is only the love of God, disclosed and enacted in Christ, that redeems the human tragedy and makes it tolerable. No, more than tolerable. Wonderful."

~ Angus Dun, former Episcopal Bishop of Washington DC, Recalled on his death 12 Aug 71

"The soul of a civilization is its religion, and it dies with its faith."

~ Will and Ariel Durant, The Age of Reason Begins Simon & Schuster 61

"The life of a religious might be compared to the building of a cathedral ... once a firm foundation has been laid, the building rises slowly."

~ Margaret Wyvill Ecclesine, A Touch of Radiance Bruce 66

"Through it all there is order and symmetry and a vision of what the completed edifice will be; a vision of a perfect structure, dedicated wholly to the honor and glory of a great, good and loving God."

~ Margaret Wyvill Ecclesine, A Touch of Radiance Bruce 66

"I go to the Eucharist day after day, every day I can, because that is what I am about."

~ Otis Edwards, Dean, Seabury-Western Theological Seminary, Evanston IL, Privately published 77

"I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation [and] is but a reflection of human frailty."

~ Albert Einstein, Recalled on his death 18 Apr 55

"My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble minds."

~ Albert Einstein, Recalled on his death 18 Apr 55

"That deep emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God."

~ Albert Einstein, Recalled on his death 18 Apr 55

"It was the experience of mystery - even if mixed with fear - that engendered religion."

~ Albert Einstein, From his 1931 book Living Philosophies, recalled on his death 18 Apr 55

"God does not play dice [with the universe]."

~ Albert Einstein, Quoted by Banesh Hoffman Albert Einstein New American Library 73

"Out of disbelief [in God] we have impudently assumed that all of life is now subject to our own will. And the disasters that have come from willing what cannot be willed have not at all brought us to some modesty about our presumptions."

~ Leslie Farber, Quoted by Melvin Maddocks "Can Therapists Be Running out of Talk?" Christian Science Monitor 14 May 86

"Christ does not save us by acting a parable of divine love; he acts the parable of divine love by saving us. That is the Christian faith."

~ Austin Farrer, Warden, Keble College, Oxford, Faith and Logic Allen & Unwin 57

"One of the silliest of all discussions is the question whether God is personal - it would be more useful to inquire whether ice is frozen."

~ Austin Farrer, Warden, Keble College, Oxford, Saving Belief Hodder & Stoughton 64

"Religion is more like response to a friend than it is like obedience to an expert."

~ Austin Farrer, Warden, Keble College, Oxford, Saving Belief Hodder & Stoughton 64

"[A rabbi] should not despair if people do not do as much as they should. Every parent has that with children. God is merciful."

~ Rabbi Louis Finkelstein, NY Times 1 Sep 85

"There are only two kinds of people in the modern world who know what they are after. One, quite frankly, is the Communist. The other, equally frankly, is the convinced Christian. ... The rest of the world are amiable nonentities."

~ Geoffrey Fisher, Archbishop of Canterbury, Recalled on his death 14 Sep 72

"Until you know that life is interesting - and find it so - you haven't found your soul."

~ Geoffrey Fisher, Archbishop of Canterbury, Recalled on his death 14 Sep 72

"Hunting God is a great adventure."

~ Marie de Floris OSB, To novices making their vows, quoted by Peter Beach and William Dunphy Benedictine and Moor Holt, Rinehart & Winston 60

"I would rather live in a world where my life is surrounded by mystery than live in a world so small that my mind could comprehend it."

~ Harry Emerson Fosdick, "The Mystery of Life" in Riverside Sermons Harper 58

"Christmas in Bethlehem. The ancient dream: a cold, clear night made brilliant by a glorious star, the smell of incense, shepherds and wise men falling to their knees in adoration of the sweet baby, the incarnation of perfect love."

~ Lucinda Franks, "Pilgrimage" NY Times 23 Dec 84

"The simple tableau is so rich with meaning that whether represented on the mantelpiece or in the mind, it seems suspended, complete unto itself, somewhere in eternity."

~ Lucinda Franks, "Pilgrimage" NY Times 23 Dec 84

"God, to me, it seems, is a verb not a noun, proper or improper."

~ R Buckminster Fuller, No More Secondhand God Southern Illinois University 63

"I have avoided the reverential approach, have tried to see him as the normal man he was, with his fair share, perhaps more than his fair share, of human frailties. It was this base metal which, in the marvelous alchemy of the spiritual journey, became transmuted into gold."

~ Monica Furlong, On Thomas Merton, Merton Harper & Row 80

"The body ... arrived at Gethsemani early on the afternoon of December 17, 1968. Monks and friends chanted the funeral liturgy in the church, and he was buried at dusk in the monastic cemetery under a light snowfall. He had, after all, returned home in time for Christmas."

~ Monica Furlong, On Merton's burial at the Monastery of Our Lady of Gethsemani in Kentucky, Merton Harper & Row 80

"I could prove God statistically. Take the human body alone - the chances that all the functions of an individual would just happen is a statistical monstrosity."

~ George H Gallup, Recalled on his death 26 Jul 84

"Without philosophy man cannot know what he makes; without religion he cannot know why."

~ Eric Gill, Quoted in Christian Science Monitor 14 Aug 80

"The motto was "Pax," but the word was set in a circle of thorns."

~ Rumer Godden, On a Benedictine motto, In This House of Brede Viking 69

"Pax: peace, but what a strange peace, made of unremitting toil and effort, seldom with a seen result; subject to constant interruptions, unexpected demands, short sleep at night, little comfort, sometimes scant food; beset with disappointments and usually misunderstood; yet peace all the same, undeviating, filled with joy and gratitude and love."

~ Rumer Godden, On a Benedictine motto, In This House of Brede Viking 69

""It is My own peace I give unto you." Not, notice, the world's peace."

~ Rumer Godden, On a Benedictine motto, In This House of Brede Viking 69

"Let us maintain our ability to wince as a people of faith."

~ Leon Good, On his Mennonite beliefs, NY Times 29 Nov 84

"The really heroic people are not the ones who travel 10,000 miles by dog sled, but those who stay 10,000 days in one place."

~ William Gordon, Episcopal Bishop of Alaska, Time 19 Nov 65

"The most eloquent prayer is the prayer through hands that heal and bless. The highest form of worship is the worship of unselfish Christian service. The greatest form of praise is the sound of consecrated feet seeking out the lost and helpless."

~ Billy Graham, Chicago American 16 Apr 67

"From the point of light within the mind of God, let light stream forth into the minds of men. Let light descend on Earth. From the point of love within the heart of God, let love stream forth into the hearts of men."

~ Great Invocation, WQXR Radio 15 Jul 83

"May Christ return to Earth. From the center where the will of God is known, let purpose guide the little wills of men - the purpose which the masters know and serve."

~ Great Invocation, WQXR Radio 15 Jul 83

"From the center which we call the race of men, let the plan of love and light work out and may it seal the door where evil dwells. Let light and love and power restore the plan on Earth."

~ Great Invocation, WQXR Radio 15 Jul 83

"You think it more difficult to turn air into wine than to turn wine into blood?"

~ Graham Greene, On a priest who pantomimes Mass, Monsignor Quixote PBS TV 13 Feb 87

"God does not die on the day when we cease to believe in a personal deity, but we die on the day when our lives cease to be illumined by the steady radiance, renewed daily, of a wonder, the source of which is beyond all reason."

~ Dag Hammarskjöld, Markings Knopf 64

"I am the vessel. The draft is God's. And God is the thirsty one."

~ Dag Hammarskjöld, Markings Knopf 64

"Out of our beliefs are born deeds; out of our deeds we form habits; out of our habits grows our character; and on our character we build our destiny."

~ Henry Hancock, Dean, St Mark's Cathedral, Minneapolis MN, Alpha Xi Delta Magazine 57

"A religious man is a person who holds God and man in one thought at one time, at all times, who suffers harm done to others, whose greatest passion is compassion, whose greatest strength is love and defiance of despair."

~ Abraham Joshua Heschel, Jewish Theological Seminary of America, NYC, NY Journal-American 5 Apr 63

"Read the Bible, first and foremost, always, every day, unremittingly and often with a concordance, until the history and prophecy and the wisdom literature of the Old Testament get into our very bones; and until the Gospels and Epistles of the New Testament become the foundation blocks of our thinking and way of life."

~ John S Higgins, former Episcopal Bishop of Rhode Island, "Ten Commandments for Preachers" Living Church 13 Jan 85

"It is only in the light of the inescapable fact of death that a person can adequately engage and enter upon the mysterious fact of life."

~ John E Hines, Presiding Bishop, Episcopal Church, Easter message 65

"Preaching is effective as long as the preacher expects something to happen - not because of the sermon, not even because of the preacher, but because of God."

~ John E Hines, Presiding Bishop, Episcopal Church, On his retirement, Witness Jul 77

"In the spectrum of God's mysteries, preaching is a sacrament: Because of its sacramental reality ... some people have never again been the same."

~ John E Hines, Presiding Bishop, Episcopal Church, On his retirement, Witness Jul 77

"God is waiting eagerly to respond with new strength to each little act of self-control, small disciplines of prayer, feeble searching after him. And his children shall be filled if they will only hunger and thirst after what he offers."

~ Richard Holloway, Anglican priest, Beyond Belief Eerdmans 81

"Simplicity, clarity, singleness: These are the attributes that give our lives power and vividness and joy as they are also the marks of great art. They seem to be the purpose of God for his whole creation."

~ Richard Holloway, Anglican priest, Beyond Belief Eerdmans 81

"The call to serve as priest or pastor is both internal and external - a matter of one's individual inner awareness and the ratification of that awareness by the church - and should manifest itself in the living out of that vocation through a lifetime."

~ Urban T Holmes III, Dean, School of Theology, University of the South, Sewanee TN, Spirituality for Ministry Harper & Row 82

"I want them "dunked" - plunged deeply into life, brought up gasping and dripping, and returned to us humble and ready to learn."

~ Reuel Howe, Director, Institute of Advanced Pastoral Studies, Bloomfield Hills MI, On candidates for the priesthood, Anglican World Epiphany/Lent 64

"Until all students are faced by the tragedies, the contradictions and the stark questions of life, they cannot understand the need for redemption or God's redemptive action."

~ Reuel Howe, Director, Institute of Advanced Pastoral Studies, Bloomfield Hills MI, On candidates for the priesthood, Anglican World Epiphany/Lent 64

"My responsibility is always and everywhere the same: to see in my brother more even than the personality and manhood that are his. My task is always and everywhere the same: to see Christ himself."

~ Trevor Huddleston CR, missionary in South Africa, Naught for Your Comfort Doubleday 56

"God bless Africa,/Guard her people,/Guide her leaders,/And give her peace."

~ Trevor Huddleston CR, missionary in South Africa, Composed for people who wanted to pray for Africa, quoted in address at Nashotah House Episcopal Seminary, Nashotah WI, 22 Apr 66

"It is not easy to be a nun. It is a life of sacrifice and self-abnegation. It is a life against nature. Poverty, chastity and obedience are extremely difficult. But there are always the graces if you will pray for them. Pray that you may all become St Johns, lovers of Christ."

~ Kathryn Hulme, The Nun's Story Little, Brown 56

"Never forget that [God] tests his real friends more severely than the lukewarm ones."

~ Kathryn Hulme, The Nun's Story Little, Brown 56

"In the city where the average age of Jews is 78, a Jewish boy has come to manhood and I have lived to see it."

~ Roza Jakubowicz, caretaker, Cracow Synagogue, On Eric Strom of Stamford CT who was invited to be bar mitzvahed in Poland, NY Times 8 Sep 85

"A human life is like a single letter in the alphabet. It can be meaningless. Or it can be part of a great meaning."

~ Jewish Theological Seminary of America, NYC, From advertisement on Rosh Hashanah, "Who Takes Delight in Life" NY Herald Tribune 5 Sep 56

"I am made to tremble and I fear!"

~ Pope John XXIII, On learning of his election to succeed Pius XII, 29 Oct 58

"I have looked into your eyes with my eyes. I have put my heart near your heart."

~ Pope John XXIII, To a prisoner on first papal visit to a prison since 1870, 26 Dec 58

"I have been able to follow my death step by step and now my life goes gently to its end."

~ Pope John XXIII, In his last hours, quoted in NY Daily News 2 Jun 63

"The feelings of my smallness and my nothingness always kept me good company."

~ Pope John XXIII, From his will, made public 6 Jun 63

"Born poor, but of honored and humble people, I am particularly proud to die poor."

~ Pope John XXIII, From his will, made public 6 Jun 63

"You know that I try to maintain a continuous conversation with you. I take comfort in the thought that the important thing is not for one person to write to Christ but for many people to love and emulate [you]. Fortunately, despite everything, this still occurs today."

~ Pope John Paul I, Letter to Jesus Christ, in volume of letters to historical figures published when he was patriarch of Venice, recalled on his death 28 Sep 78

"There are people and nations, Mother, that I would like to say to you by name. I entrust them to you in silence, I entrust them to you in the way that you know best."

~ Pope John Paul II, Prayer at Shrine of Mary, Jasna Gora Monastery, on return to Poland after election as pope, Time 18 Jun 79

"This people draws its origin from Abraham, our father in faith ... The very people that received from God the commandment "Thou shalt not kill" itself experienced in a special measure what is meant by killing. It is not permissible for anyone to pass by this inscription with indifference."

~ Pope John Paul II, On visiting Auschwitz concentration camp that he called "the Golgotha of the modern world," Time 18 Jun 79

"Do not abandon yourselves to despair. ... We are the Easter people and hallelujah is our song."

~ Pope John Paul II, Address in Harlem 2 Oct 79

"When you wonder about the mystery of yourself, look to Christ, who gives you the meaning of life. When you wonder what it means to be a mature person, look to Christ, who is the fulfillness of humanity. And when you wonder about your role in the future of the world ... look to Christ."

~ Pope John Paul II, To 19,000 students in NYC 3 Oct 79

"Social justice cannot be attained by violence. Violence kills what it intends to create."

~ Pope John Paul II, To workers in São Paulo, Brazil, news summaries 4 Jul 80

"Humanity should question itself, once more, about the absurd and always unfair phenomenon of war, on whose stage of death and pain only remain standing the negotiating table that could and should have prevented it."

~ Pope John Paul II, On arriving in Buenos Aires near end of conflict between Argentina and Great Britain over the Falkland Islands, 11 Jun 82

"[I kiss the soil] as if I placed a kiss on the hands of a mother, for the homeland is our earthly mother. I consider it my duty to be with my compatriots in this sublime and difficult moment."

~ Pope John Paul II, On arriving in Poland during period of martial law, Time 27 Jun 83

"What we talked about will have to remain a secret between him and me. I spoke to him as a brother whom I have pardoned and who has my complete trust."

~ Pope John Paul II, On visiting the imprisoned Mehmet Ali Agca, who wounded the pope in a 1981 assassination attempt, Time 9 Jan 84

"In the context of Christmas and the Holy Year of Redemption, I was able to meet with the person that you all know by name, Ali Agca, who in the year 1981 on the 13th of May made an attempt on my life. But Providence took things in its own hands, in what I would call an extraordinary way, so that today ... I was able to meet my assailant and repeat to him the pardon I gave him immediately."

~ Pope John Paul II, On visiting the imprisoned Mehmet Ali Agca, who wounded the pope in a 1981 assassination attempt, Time 9 Jan 84

"In our home there was always prayer - aloud, proud and unapologetic."

~ Lyndon B Johnson, 36th US President, To Washington prayer breakfast, quoted in Time 3 Apr 64

"To me death is not a fearful thing. It's living that's cursed."

~ Jim Jones, Final words tape-recorded before his death and mass suicide of his followers at Jonestown, Guyana, 18 Nov 78

"I could not say I believe. I know! I have had the experience of being gripped by something that is stronger than myself, something that people call God."

~ Carl Jung, Time 14 Feb 55

"Our heart glows, and secret unrest gnaws at the root of our being. ... Dealing with the unconscious has become a question of life for us."

~ Carl Jung, Time 14 Feb 55

"I have treated many hundreds of patients. ... Among [those] in the second half of life - that is to say, over 35 - there has not been one whose problem in the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on life."

~ Carl Jung, Time 14 Feb 55

"In my case Pilgrim's Progress consisted in my having to climb down a thousand ladders until I could reach out my hand to the little clod of earth that I am."

~ Carl Jung, Letter to a former student on reassessing religious values outlined to Sigmund Freud a half century earlier, quoted in Gerhard Adler ed Letters, Vol 1 Princeton 73

"Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people."

~ Carl Jung, Letter to a former student on reassessing religious values outlined to Sigmund Freud a half century earlier, quoted in Gerhard Adler ed Letters, Vol 1 Princeton 73

"Because you cannot see him, God is everywhere."

~ Yasunari Kawabata, Quoted by Susan Cheever Home before Dark Houghton Mifflin 84

"I can see, and that is why I can be happy, in what you call the dark, but which to me is golden. I can see a God-made world, not a manmade world."

~ Helen Keller, Reply to question,"Can you see a world?" in 1955 documentary The Unconquered

"It gives me a deep comforting sense that "things seen are temporal and things unseen are eternal.""

~ Helen Keller, On reading the Bible daily, news summaries 26 Jun 55

"I know there is a God - I see the storm coming and I see his hand in it - if he has a place then I am ready - we see the hand."

~ John F Kennedy, 35th US President, Paraphrasing Abraham Lincoln in notes on program for prayer breakfast, NY Times 15 May 64

"We have much to be judged on when he comes, slums and battlefields and insane asylums, but these are the symptoms of our illness and the result of our failures in love."

~ Madeleine L'Engle, The Irrational Season Seabury 77

"In the evening of life we shall be judged on love, and not one of us is going to come off very well, and were it not for my absolute faith in the loving forgiveness of my Lord I could not call on him to come."

~ Madeleine L'Engle, The Irrational Season Seabury 77

"Conversion for me was not a Damascus Road experience. I slowly moved into an intellectual acceptance of what my intuition had always known."

~ Madeleine L'Engle, "Writer, Wife, Theologian" Anglican Digest Pentecost 83

"I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen, not only because I see it but because I see everything in it."

~ C S Lewis, Recalled on his death 22 Nov 63

"Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither."

~ C S Lewis, Recalled on his death 22 Nov 63

"The safest road to hell is the gradual one - the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts."

~ C S Lewis, Recalled on his death 22 Nov 63

"What seem our worst prayers may really be, in God's eyes, our best. Those, I mean, which are least supported by devotional feeling. For these may come from a deeper level than feeling. God sometimes seems to speak to us most intimately when he catches us, as it were, off our guard."

~ C S Lewis, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer Harcourt, Brace & World 64

"Some people feel guilty about their anxieties and regard them as a defect of faith [but] they are afflictions, not sins. Like all afflictions, they are, if we can so take them, our share in the passion of Christ."

~ C S Lewis, Episcopalian Apr 65

"A man who is eating or lying with his wife or preparing to go to sleep in humility, thankfulness and temperance, is, by Christian standards, in an infinitely higher state than one who is listening to Bach or reading Plato in a state of pride."

~ C S Lewis, To undergraduates at Oxford, quoted in W H Lewis ed Letters of C S Lewis Harcourt, Brace & World 66

"I gave in, and admitted that God was God."

~ C S Lewis, On relinquishing atheism at age 31 in 1929, quoted by William Griffin Clive Staples Lewis Harper & Row 86

"God allows us to experience the low points of life in order to teach us lessons we could not learn in any other way. The way we learn those lessons is not to deny the feelings but to find the meanings underlying them."

~ Stanley Lindquist, Professor of Psychology, California State University, Asbury Park NJ Press 25 Jul 75

"The person who is truly religious is one who has come to be less at home in the world of sense, less moved by the things that appear, less confident in the weight and power of sheer material force and more assured of those verities that are hidden from the wise and prudent but revealed unto babes; more aware of those things which "eye hath not seen, nor ear heard," more at home in that greater and better part of life which is out of sight."

~ Sidney Lovett, Chaplain, Yale, Recalled on his death 3 Apr 79

"It is ... in plunging into the stream of life itself and entering into the deepest involvement with the values that confront us, exercising our wills to the utmost - to the breaking point - that we find God in the very extremity of the battle."

~ Geddes MacGregor, Professor of Philosophy and Religion, Bryn Mawr, Introduction to Religious Philosophy Houghton Mifflin 59

"I like to go to Marshall Field's in Chicago just to see how many things there are in the world that I do not want."

~ Mother Mary Madeleva CSC, My First Seventy Years Macmillan 59

"So often we try to alter circumstances to suit ourselves, instead of letting them alter us, which is what they are meant to do."

~ Mother Maribel CSMV, Superior, Community of St Mary the Virgin, Wantage, England, Quoted by Sister Janet CSMV Mother Maribel of Wantage Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge 73

"Our Lord did not try to alter circumstances. He submitted to them. They shaped his life and eventually brought him to Calvary. I believe we miss opportunities and lovely secrets our Lord is waiting to teach us by not taking what comes."

~ Mother Maribel CSMV, Superior, Community of St Mary the Virgin, Wantage, England, Quoted by Sister Janet CSMV Mother Maribel of Wantage Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge 73

"Our real work is prayer. What good is the cold iron of our frantic little efforts unless first we heat it in the furnace of our prayer? Only heat will diffuse heat."

~ Mother Maribel CSMV, Superior, Community of St Mary the Virgin, Wantage, England, Quoted by Sister Janet CSMV Mother Maribel of Wantage Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge 73

"Silence is not a thing we make; it is something into which we enter. It is always there. We talk about keeping silence. We keep only that which is precious. Silence is precious, for it is of God. In silence all God's acts are done; in silence alone can his voice be heard and his word spoken."

~ Mother Maribel CSMV, Superior, Community of St Mary the Virgin, Wantage, England, Quoted by Sister Janet CSMV Mother Maribel of Wantage Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge 73

"If we were nothing here, at least we were children of God. At some far-off point in time, all these things would be rectified and we would get our golden slippers."

~ Calvin Marshall, evangelist, On Christianity's traditional attraction for blacks, Time 6 Apr 70

"Our religion had to mean more to us. We had to emote, we had to lose ourselves in it. We had to sing and shout, and after it was all over we had to have a big meal and have something going on Sunday afternoon. Because when Monday came, it was back out into the fields, or back to the janitor's job, or back to Miss Ann's kitchen scrubbing the floor."

~ Calvin Marshall, evangelist, On Christianity's traditional attraction for blacks, Time 6 Apr 70

"The true vocation [is] settled on the day the girl looks around her and sees a young woman her own age in pretty clothes wheeling a baby carriage by the convent. Then her heart takes an awful flop and she knows what it is God really is asking of her. If she stays - then she has a true calling and the making of a good religious."

~ Mother Mary Ambrose MMS, Life 15 Mar 63

"A very large amount of human suffering and frustration is caused by the fact that many men and women are not content to be the sort of beings that God has made them, but try to persuade themselves that they are really beings of some different kind."

~ Eric Mascall, Lecturer in Philosophy of Religion, Christ Church, Oxford, The Importance of Being Human Columbia University 58

"Evil is near. Sometimes late at night the air grows strongly clammy and cold around me. I feel it brushing me. All that the Devil asks is acquiescence ... not struggle, not conflict. Acquiescence."

~ Suzanne Massie, On the years of treating her son's hemophilia, Journey, written with her husband Robert, Knopf 75

"Accept, accept that I have won, whispers the Devil. You can see for yourself that life is unjust, unfair, that suffering is ordinary. Who is stronger? I am, of course. Just despair, my dear, despair. Only tell me that I am strong, that Evil rules."

~ Suzanne Massie, On the years of treating her son's hemophilia, Journey, written with her husband Robert, Knopf 75

"Naturally, we cannot say much about the spiritual body, because we cannot imagine what it would be like to have a spiritual body different from that which we now inhabit; but it seems to me reasonable to believe that we are weaving our spiritual bodies as we go along."

~ W R Matthews, Dean, St Paul's Cathedral, London, Recalled on his retirement, news summaries 31 Dec 67

"Dear youth, you have won through goodness. You were the ones who came to Christ and calmly stood by the cross. Stand by him all your lives."

~ Jan Mazur, Roman Catholic Bishop of Siedlce, Poland, After leading 450 Polish clerics on a bread and water fast in support of students who protested the removal of crucifixes from public buildings, NY Times 7 Apr 84

"The value of persistent prayer is not that he will hear us ... but that we will finally hear him."

~ William McGill, Episcopal priest, "Prayer Unceasing" Living Church 28 Sep 86

"Prayer does not use up artificial energy, doesn't burn up any fossil fuel, doesn't pollute."

~ Margaret Mead, Quoted by Jane Howard Margaret Mead Simon & Schuster 84

"By reading the scriptures I am so renewed that all nature seems renewed around me and with me. The sky seems to be a pure, a cooler blue, the trees a deeper green. ... The whole world is charged with the glory of God and I feel fire and music ... under my feet."

~ Thomas Merton OCSO, Thoughts in Solitude Farrar, Straus 58

"The very contradictions in my life are in some ways signs of God's mercy to me."

~ Thomas Merton OCSO, Preface to Thomas Merton Reader Harcourt, Brace & World 62

"So Brother Matthew locked the gate behind me, and I was enclosed in the four walls of my new freedom."

~ Thomas Merton OCSO, On entering the Trappist Monastery of Our Lady of Gethsemani, The Seven Storey Mountain Harcourt, Brace 48, recalled on his death 10 Dec 68

"Solitude is not something you must hope for in the future. Rather, it is a deepening of the present, and unless you look for it in the present you will never find it."

~ Thomas Merton OCSO, Quoted by Monica Furlong Merton Harper & Row 80

"Be good, keep your feet dry, your eyes open, your heart at peace and your soul in the joy of Christ."

~ Thomas Merton OCSO, Quoted by Monica Furlong Merton Harper & Row 80

"Praised be St John, the glorified of God! Lord, grant me the prayers of St John, disciple and friend whom thou lovest, apostle of love. Thy love, forever, eternal, that my faith may become as complete, as flaming and tranquil, as his, and pierce as deep and speak as simply in the spirit."

~ Eric Milner-White, Dean of York Minster, England, My God, My Glory Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge 54

"That I may apprehend thee as light lightening every creature and everything, every moment; that I may know thee as truth, hearing thy voice; that I may serve thee as love, loving thy people, asking for no reward, no place, but one only and for one instant - to lean on thy bosom."

~ Eric Milner-White, Dean of York Minster, England, My God, My Glory Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge 54

"St John, on Christ's bosom, pray for me in the days of my discipleship, in the house of my faith, in the hour of my death."

~ Eric Milner-White, Dean of York Minster, England, My God, My Glory Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge 54

"The religion of Christ is not aspirin to deaden the pain of living, it is not a discussion group, nor a miraculous medal nor a piety, nor bingo for God. Not anything less than a joyous adventure of being Christ in a world still skeptical of him."

~ John Monaghan, Roman Catholic priest, "A Lenten Message" NY Journal-American 16 Feb 61

"The one great aim of her life is the glory of God./The one great example of her life is the incarnate God./The one great devotion of her life is the will of God./The one great longing of her life is union with God./The one great reward of her life is the vision of God."

~ Mother Harriet Monsell CSJB, "My Ideal of a Religious," quoted by James B Simpson and Edward M Story Stars in His Crown Ploughshare Press 76

"Christianity is different from all other religions. They are the story of man's search for God. The Gospel is the story of God's search for man."

~ Dewi Morgan, Rector, St Bride's, Fleet Street, London, St Mary's Messenger Sep/Oct 66

"This was a splendid life. Splendid in its obscurity and humility, splendid in its strength and charity, splendid in its achievements."

~ Robert C Mortimer, Anglican Bishop of Exeter, England, At requiem for Anglican Franciscan Algy Robertson, quoted by Fr Denis SSF Father Algy Hodder & Stoughton 64

"Here the skeptic finds chaos and the believer further evidence that the hand that made us is divine."

~ Robert Moses, NYC Parks Commissioner, At reopening of Hayden Planetarium, NY Herald Tribune 3 Feb 60

"One of life's gifts is that each of us, no matter how tired and downtrodden, finds reasons for thankfulness: for the crops carried in from the fields and the grapes from the vineyard."

~ J Robert Moskin, On ancient autumn holiday of Succoth, "The Heritage of Judaism" Look 5 Oct 65

"Thanksgiving comes to us out of the prehistoric dimness, universal to all ages and all faiths. At whatever straws we must grasp, there is always a time for gratitude and new beginnings."

~ J Robert Moskin, On ancient autumn holiday of Succoth, "The Heritage of Judaism" Look 5 Oct 65

"When you eat fish, you don't eat the bones. You eat the flesh. Take the Bible like that."

~ Robert R Moton, President, Tuskegee Institute, NY Post 17 May 64

"Every happening, great and small, is a parable whereby God speaks to us, and the art of life is to get the message."

~ Malcolm Muggeridge, News summaries 31 Dec 78

"God had a sense of humor, a style of his own."

~ Jack ("Murph the Surf") Murphy, On his parole 10 Nov 86

"Today's barbarian may wear a Brooks Brothers suit and carry a ball-point pen. In fact, even beneath the academic gown there may lurk a child of the wilderness, untutored in the high tradition of civility, who goes busily and happily about his work, a domesticated and law-abiding man, engaged in the concoction of a philosophy to put an end to all philosophy."

~ John Courtney Murray SJ, Recalled on his death 16 Aug 67

"Religion is a candle inside a multicolored lantern. Everyone looks through a particular color, but the candle is always there."

~ Mohammed Naguib, News summaries 31 Dec 53

"Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in a lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope."

~ Reinhold Niebuhr, The Irony of American History Scribner's 52

"Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith."

~ Reinhold Niebuhr, The Irony of American History Scribner's 52

"Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we are saved by love."

~ Reinhold Niebuhr, The Irony of American History Scribner's 52

"The final test of religious faith ... is whether it will enable men to endure insecurity without complacency or despair, whether it can so interpret the ancient verities that they will not become mere escape hatches from responsibilities but instruments of insights into what civilization means."

~ Reinhold Niebuhr, Saturday Evening Post 23 Jul 60

"God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things which should be changed and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other."

~ Reinhold Niebuhr, Originally part of a sermon in 1943 and later used by Alcoholics Anonymous, quoted by June Bingham Courage to Change Scribner's 61

"Christianity is one beggar telling another beggar where he found bread."

~ D T Niles, NY Times 11 May 86

"The presence of faith is no guarantee of deliverance from times of distress and vicissitude but there can be a certainty that nothing will be encountered that is overwhelming."

~ William Barr Oglesby Jr, Professor of Pastoral Counseling, Union Theological Seminary, Richmond VA, Virginia Seminary Journal May 83

"Where life is colorful and varied, religion can be austere or unimportant. Where life is appallingly monotonous, religion must be emotional, dramatic and intense. Without the curry, boiled rice can be very dull."

~ C Northcote Parkinson, East and West Houghton Mifflin 63

"Of all human activities, man's listening to God is the supreme act of his reasoning and will."

~ Pope Paul VI, Quoted by Curtis Pepper The Pope's Backyard Farrar, Straus & Giroux 66

"When you pray for anyone you tend to modify your personal attitude toward him. You lift the relationship thereby to a higher level. The best in the other person begins to flow out toward you as your best flows toward him. In the meeting of the best in each a higher unity of understanding is established."

~ Norman Vincent Peale, The Power of Positive Thinking Prentice-Hall 52

"The wretchedness of men equals the mercy of God."

~ Pio da Pietreicina, Capuchin monk, Time 24 Apr 64

"Labor is not merely the fatigue of body without sense or value; nor is it merely a humiliating servitude. It is a service of God, a gift of God, the vigor and fullness of human life, the gauge of eternal rest."

~ Pope Pius XII, Message for Labor Day, Guideposts Sep 55

"I shall be able to rest one minute after I die."

~ Pope Pius XII, To physicians who asked him to curtail his work, Look 22 Aug 55

"Bodily pain affects man as a whole down to the deepest layers of his moral being. It forces him to face again the fundamental questions of his fate, of his attitude toward God and fellow man, of his individual and collective responsibility and of the sense of his pilgrimage on earth."

~ Pope Pius XII, To a group of international heart specialists, news summaries 1 Sep 56

"Help one another, serve one another, for the times are urgent and the days are evil. Help one another, serve one another, as from this hundredth ceremony at St Augustine's throne there goes a band of those whose hearts God has touched."

~ Michael Ramsey, Archbishop of Canterbury, Conclusion of enthronement sermon 27 Jun 61

"Learning to laugh at ourselves, we did not lack other things to laugh about. How should we, if the Christian life is indeed the knowledge of him who is the author of laughter as well as tears?"

~ Michael Ramsey, Archbishop of Canterbury, On his days as a seminarian, quoted by James B Simpson The Hundredth Archbishop of Canterbury Harper & Row 62

"Take heed to thyself, that self which can deceive itself unless it is revealed in naked simplicity before its God. It is in this taking heed that a true devoutness, simple, generous, Godward, has its root and its renewing."

~ Michael Ramsey, Archbishop of Canterbury, To men about to be ordained, quoted by James B Simpson The Hundredth Archbishop of Canterbury Harper & Row 62

"The supreme question is not what we make of the Eucharist but what the Eucharist is making of us."

~ Michael Ramsey, Archbishop of Canterbury, To men about to be ordained, quoted by James B Simpson The Hundredth Archbishop of Canterbury Harper & Row 62

"There is a simplicity born of shallowness, and falsely so called; and there is a simplicity which is the costly outcome of the discipline of mind and heart and will. Simplicity in preaching is properly the simplicity of the knowledge of God and of human beings. To say of someone "he preaches simply" is to say "he walks with God.""

~ Michael Ramsey, Archbishop of Canterbury, To men about to be ordained, quoted by James B Simpson The Hundredth Archbishop of Canterbury Harper & Row 62

"Reason is an action of the mind; knowledge is a possession of the mind; but faith is an attitude of the person. It means you are prepared to stake yourself on something being so."

~ Michael Ramsey, Archbishop of Canterbury, To men about to be ordained, quoted by James B Simpson The Hundredth Archbishop of Canterbury Harper & Row 62

"Christ comes to bind lives to God through reconciliation. He comes to bind human lives closely to one another in fellowship. He comes to bind up the individual human life that is lost and divided. Christian unity involves all these three aspects of peace."

~ Michael Ramsey, Archbishop of Canterbury, Tennessee Churchman Dec 66

"To be with God wondering, that is adoration. To be with God gratefully, that is thanksgiving. To be with God ashamed, that is contrition. To be with God with people and things we care about in our hearts, that is intercession. But the center of it in desire and in design will be the being with God."

~ Michael Ramsey, Archbishop of Canterbury, "The Heart of Prayer" Christian World 7 Dec 78

"The Christian call ... does not mean we are to become rigid and aggressive moralists with a strict and firm answer to every ethical problem. But it does mean we are committed to the conviction that there is an answer to be found."

~ David H C Read, Pastor, Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church, NYC, Time 7 Feb 64

"I miss going to church, but I think the Lord understands."

~ Ronald Reagan, 40th US President, Explaining that security precautions prevented him from joining in public worship, reply in debate with Democratic candidate Walter F Mondale, Louisville KY, 7 Oct 84

"I sing what is in my heart. My only thought now is to sing as I have never sung before."

~ Betty Robbins, On being first woman cantor in Jewish history, news summaries 15 Aug 55

"It is not the Christian vocation to canonize the human condition as such or to lament over it. It is our vocation to rise above it where it drags us down; to transform it where it might trap others; to ennoble it by the operation, through our agency, of that Spirit who continually refreshes the Church and renews the face of the earth."

~ Roman Catholic Bishops of the United States, Pastoral letter, NY Times 11 Jan 68

"The New Testament never simply says "remember Jesus Christ." That is a half-finished sentence. It says "remember Jesus Christ is risen from the dead.""

~ Robert Runcie, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1980 Easter sermon, recalled in Seasons of the Spirit Eerdmans 83

"The priest is concerned with other people for the sake of God and with God for the sake of other people."

~ Robert Runcie, Archbishop of Canterbury, Ordination sermon, "The Character of a Priest," recalled in Seasons of the Spirit Eerdmans 83

"If our faith delivers us from worry, then worry is an insult flung in the face of God."

~ Robert Runcie, Archbishop of Canterbury, Address during April 1982 tour of Nigeria, recalled in Seasons of the Spirit Eerdmans 83

"She returned home, to the empty and dark room, and there, lonely and suffering, uttered a prayer to the God whom she had long since abandoned, yet who remained the God of her ancestors, praying that the spirit of goodness and mercy, omnipresent and all-pervading, would soften the hearts of those who decided Sasha's fate."

~ Anatoly Rybakov, On a mother seeking the whereabouts of her son during the