“If this be an ordered selfishness, then we should pause before we condemn anyone for the vice of egoism, for there may be deeper roots for its causes than we have knowledge of.”
Source: Dracula
“... if one hasn't been through, as our people mercifully did not go through, the horrors of an occupation by a foreign power, you have no right to pronounce upon what a country does, which has been through all that.”
“You understand nothing," I told him with a weary shake of the head, but I would not try to make him understand. That there was no justification for it: the murder of another, no matter how vile. We had all been wrong and, blackest of ironies, I had known this to hold that precious and wondrous thing, life, in my hands. To hold it in my hands before I destroyed it.”
Source: On the Soul of a Vampire
“In the nine years since [Robert] Harris’s novel [Conclave] was published our culture has, if anything, become more enamored with certainty, not less — which is really saying something. Ours is a culture, a society, that seems fantastically certain of certainty. Certainty rules our political discourse, an our-side-is-right-the-other-side-wrong absolutism that the internet helps to empower. As Warzel and Caulfield lamented in The Atlantic recently, ours is a culture “where every event — every human success or tragedy — becomes little more than evidence to score political points... It is a culture where you never have to change your mind or even confront uncomfortable information.”
You don’t need to be Wittgenstein to recognize that certainty as a habit of the mind, as an epistemological reflex, ain’t been doing us any favors — not at the level of the individual or the society. Certainty is a state of final judgment — one might even say terminal judgment. Certainty is the opposite of curiosity and open-ness, and about the worst form of knowing there is because it brooks no discussion, no amelioration, no correction, no testing.”
“Sin is self-imposed judgment created by the absence of love in our material world.”
Source: Believing Becoming Being
“Our judgments are always too hasty, and souls are truly separated when love does not unite them. I was wrong in my reckoning of that man.”
Source: Jean de Florette & Manon of the Springs
“We grant ourselves the grace of context, but demand character perfection from others.”
Source: The Art of De-Illusion: How to Stop Your Mind from Lying to You and See the World as It Is
“The pursuit of truth is not important. The pursuit of that truth is important which helps you in reaching your goal that is provided you have one.”
Source: The Romantic Manifesto
“I remember thinking how exhausting it was to exist as a rational thinker in the Bible Belt. No one judged you based on your character; instead it was all about how many times per week you went to church.”
Source: Life Is a Lazy Susan of Sh*t Sandwiches: Advice, Inspiration and Laughter from the I've Had It Podcast Hosts
“When you judge another person, you make forgiveness necessary to move on with your life.”
Source: Love and Suffering: Break the Emotional Chains that Prevent You from Experiencing Love