Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Bruce Marshall

Quote by Bruce Marshall

“That's just the trouble really. Nobody's shocked by anything anymore; we're not shocked by deceit, cruelty, lust for power, faithlessness, money-grubbing. Indeed, we accept it as inevitable that each and every one of our fellow men should be impelled only by selfishness. Well, sir, let me say that it's stupid of us not to be shocked, because the continuation of our civilisation depends precisely upon our ability to be shocked.”

Quote by Bruce Marshall

Book:Vespers in Vienna
Create image

Work

Vespers in Vienna

Browse quotes and source details for this work. more

Author

Bruce Marshall

Browse famous quotes and profile details for Bruce Marshall. more

You May Also Like

“Under these circumstances the most anodyne book was a source of danger from the simple fact that love was alluded to, and woman depicted as an attractive creature; and this was enough to account for all—for the inherent ignorance of Catholics, since it was proclaimed as the preventive cure for temptations—for the instinctive horror of art, since to these craven souls every written and studied work was in its nature a vehicle of sin and an incitement to fall. Would it not really be far more sensible and judicious to open the windows, to air the rooms, to treat these souls as manly beings, to teach them not to be so much afraid of their own flesh, to inculcate the firmness and courage needed for resistance? For really it is rather like a dog which barks at your heels and snaps at your legs if you are afraid of him, but who beats a retreat if you turn on him boldly and drive him off. The fact remains that these schemes of education have resulted, on the one hand, in the triumph of the flesh in the greater number of men who have been thus brought up and then thrown into a worldly life, and on the other, in a wide diffusion of folly and fear, an abandonment of the possessions of the intellect and the capitulation of the Catholic army surrendering without a blow to the inroads of profane literature, which takes possession of territory that it has not even had the trouble of conquering. This really was madness! The Church had created art, had cherished it for centuries; and now by the effeteness of her sons she was cast into a corner. All the great movements of our day, one after the other—romanticism, naturalism—had been effected independently of her, or even against her will. If a book were not restricted to the simplest tales, or pleasing fiction ending in virtue rewarded and vice punished, that was enough; the propriety of beadledom was at once ready to bray. As soon as the most modern form of art, the most malleable and the broadest—the Novel—touched on scenes of real life, depicted passion, became a psychological study, an effort of analysis, the army of bigots fell back all along the line. The Catholic force, which might have been thought better prepared than any others to contest the ground which theology had long since explored, retired in good order, satisfied to cover its retreat by firing from a safe distance, with its old-fashioned match-lock blunderbusses, on works it had neither inspired nor written. The Church party, centuries behind the time, and having made no attempt to follow the evolution of style in the course of ages, now turned to the rustic who can scarcely read; it did not understand more than half of the words used by modern writers, and had become, it must be said, a camp of the illiterate. Incapable of distinguishing the good from the bad, it included in one condemnation the filth of pornography and real works of art; in short, it ended by emitting such folly and talking such preposterous nonsense, that it fell into utter discredit and ceased to count at all. And it would have been so easy for it to work on a little way, to try to keep up with the times, and to understand, to convince itself whether in any given work the author was writing up the Flesh, glorifying it, praising it, and nothing more, or whether, on the contrary, he depicted it merely to buffet it—hating it. And, again, it would have done well to convince itself that there is a chaste as well as a prurient nude, and that it should not cry shame on every picture in which the nude is shown. Above all, it ought to have recognized that vices may well be depicted and studied with a view to exciting disgust of them and showing their horrors.”

ArtReligionCultureSinMoralityTemptationCatholicismLtierature
Book:The Cathedral
Create image

“Buddha says: Love yourself. To love yourself is to get rid of self-condemnation and thinking that you are not worthy or loved by existence. Love yourself, says Buddha, but love begins with yourself and then it goes on spreading. Love yourself; says Buddha, and then adds and Watch. This is meditation, but the first requirement is to love yourself. A person who loves himself can easily become meditative, because meditation means to love yourself and to be with yourself. meditation is to enjoy yourself in your beautiful aloneness. Celebrating yourself is what meditation is all about. To be is the greatest miracle and meditation opens the door to this great miracle. But only a man who loves himself can meditate. Unless you love yourself, you cannot be with yourself. Create a loving climate and atmosphere around yourself. Love your body and love your mind. By loving yourself, you will destroy the self-condemnation that society has implanted within you.”

LoveSinAcceptanceJudgementLove YourselfAcceptance Of OneselfRelationhsips
Book:The Call of the Heart
Create image

“Listen, the bass lisper intoned. At the time Marie and I did away with that baby, we felt ourselves to be working in the service of good. Honestly! We loved one another; the baby was not quite right; was an impediment to our love; its (his) stunted development impeded the natural expression of our love (we could not travel, could not dine out, were rarely given the slightest degree of privacy) and so it seemed (to us, at that time) that to remove the negative influence that was that baby (by dropping him into Furniss Creek) would free us up; to be more loving, and be more fully in the world, and would relieve him of the suffering entailed in being forevermore not quite right; would, that is, free him up from his suffering as well, and maximize the total happiness. - It seemed that way to you, the Brit said. - It did, it truly did, the bass lisper said. - Does it seem that way to you now? the woman asked. - Less so, the bass lisper said sadly. - Then your punishment is having the desired effect, the woman said.”

SinCrimeMurderPunishmentParentsDeath Of A Child
Author:George Sanders
Create image

“I think that the trouble of the world is this: It has never been easy to obey our Lord's commands, not even in the days when all Europeans were Christians, and did not imagine that, just because they could see planets and stars and the moon at the end of a telescope, Christ had not died for their sins and risen from the dead. That was, my colonel, the great disservice your nineteenth-century materialists did to the world: to make it more difficult to obey the Lord. For there are two ways in which men and women obey the Lord: the first is because of love, and the second is because of fear, and always more have obeyed because of the second reason than because of the first. The people who formerly obeyed because of love still obey from love, but those who used to obey because of what they were afraid was going to happen to them in the next world if they didn't, no longer do so, because the clever men have told them that the next world does not exist and that consequently after death there is neither reward of virtue nor chastisement of sin. You may not perhaps think that these things are very important, but if you wish to save European civilisation, you will be foolish not to think so.”

SinHistorySalvationModernity
Book:Vespers in Vienna
Create image