Memorable Quotes

One of the blunders religious people are particularly fond of making is the attempt to be more spiritual than God. - Frederick Buechner

(From an interview of Frederick Buechner by The Door magazine:)
BUECHNER: There is a wonderful piece by Karl Barth in a book called The Word of God, The Word of Man. He says that reading the Bible is like looking down from a building onto the street and seeing everyone looking up, pointing at something. Because of the way the window is situated, you can't see what they're seeing but you realize they are seeing something of extraordinary importance. That is what it is like to read the Bible. It's full of people, all pointing up at some extraordinary event. All those different fingers are pointing at truth; all those different voices are babbling about truth in all the Bible's different forms.

DOOR: But what is the truth the fingers are pointing at?

BUECHNER: Well, the truth has to do basically with the presence of God in history, the presence of God in the tangled history of Israel, of all places, and the tangled histories of us all. The truth is very hard to verbalize without making it sound like a platitude framed on a minister's wall. It is a living truth in the sense that it is better experienced than explained. Not even the Bible can contain it finally, but only point to it.

Immanel Kant: The human heart refuses to believe in a universe without purpose.

(from FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES OF THE METAPHYSICS OF ETHICS):
"...as to moral feeling, this supposed special sense, the appeal to it is indeed superficial when those who cannot think believe that feeling will help them out, even in what concerns general laws: and besides, feelings which naturally differ infinitely in degree cannot furnish a uniform standard of good and evil, nor has any one a right to form judgments for others by his own feelings..."

If man makes himself a worm he must not complain when he is trodden on.