“I glimpsed the man's face with the shine of death on it. They laid him down there in the open. They had brought him there to be close to his death, I understood this also at the same moment. For who would wish to see a companion gasp his last on a jolting cart? We desire to keep the dying and the newly dead close before our eyes so as to give them full meed of pity. Our Lord was brought down to be pitied, on the Cross He was too far away.” ChristDyingPity Book:Morality Play Source: Morality Play
“When silence falls on the world then there is always one small sound that grows louder. I could hear the whispering and sighing of the snow and this sound was within me and without.” SilenceSnow Book:Morality Play Source: Morality Play
“The mind is constituted to accept the god of the more powerful. If you have to choose between the god of the slave owner and the god of the enslaved, naturally you will choose the former . . .” GodBeliefPowerMorality Book:Sacred Hunger Source: Sacred Hunger
“Nothing a man suffers will prevent him from inflicting suffering on others. Indeed, it will teach him the way” Suffering Book:Sacred Hunger Source: Sacred Hunger
“She talked in flat tones, keeping her mouth half-closed so that the words came out in a mutter without changing the lines of her face. Margaret had suffered much hardship and degradation of body and was unwilling now to offer the world anything superfluous.” SufferingSpeech Book:Morality Play Source: Morality Play
“Sometimes in storm weather the shore had fluttered with disabled swallows. They crouched lower for his approach, without strength to escape. In his hands they pulsed with that same pulse. He had taken a bird and warmed it between his hands or inside his jacket, brought the life back until it was able to fly. Sometimes, released from his hands, they circled once around him before flying away; in gratitude, or so the child had believed--and the belief had survived all the man's science.” ReasonFaithGrowing Up Book:Sacred Hunger Source: Sacred Hunger
“It is everyone's bounden duty to try to get more than they have got already. If you have got two shillin' you try to make it into four shillin' . . . there is no end to it.” MoneyCapitalismFree Enterprise Book:Sacred Hunger Source: Sacred Hunger
“This made a pattern of movement and gesture very effective and it provoked laughter, which is a welcome thing as saving from silence, but also frightening when there are many laughing together -- it is then a sea with strange tides. Players swim in the rise and fall of it and if they lose the mastery they drown.” PlayLaughter Book:Morality Play Source: Morality Play
“The successful cannot be unhappy -- it was a contradiction in terms.” HappinessSuccessMoneyMaterialismSatirical Book:Sacred Hunger Source: Sacred Hunger
“Doubt is the ally of hope, not its enemy, and together they made all the blessing he had.” HopeDoubt Book:Sacred Hunger Source: Sacred Hunger
“The flood of cheap manufactures, for which the people have no need,destroys their industries. They become dependent on this trade and the demand for goods can only be met by enslaving their fellows.” Walmart Book:Sacred Hunger Source: Sacred Hunger
“This praise, though far from fulsome, gave me pleasure and that is to my shame. But there was something in him, some power of spirit, that made me want to please him. Perhaps, it occurs to me now, it was no more than the intensity of his wish. Men are distinguished by the power of their wanting. What this one wanted became his province and his meal, he governed it and fed on it from the first moment of desire. Besides, with the perversity of our nature, being tested had made me more desire to succeed, though knowing the enterprise to be sinful.” TestedWanting Book:Morality Play Source: Morality Play