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“Nevertheless, every failure to cope with a life situation must be laid, in the end, to a restriction of consciousness. Wars and temper tantrums are the makeshifts of ignorance; regrets are illuminations come too late. The whole sense of the ubiquitous myth of the hero’s passage is that it shall serve as a general pattern for men and women...The individual has only to discover his own position with reference to this general human formula, and let it then assist him past his restricting walls.”

“Nevertheless, I'm not sure I can quite express what is so basic, so right, so utterly human about cooking and eating together. As far back as you can go in history, you find human beings gathering around tables for the purpose of eating together. Offering food and water is an instinctive act of courtesy in almost every culture around the world. In the Bible and Jewish-Christian tradition, breaking bread together is perhaps both the humblest and the most meaningful reflection of unity.”

“Nevertheless if any skillful Servant of Nature shall bring force to bear on matter, and shall vex it and drive it to extremities as if with the purpose of reducing it to nothing, then will matter (since annihilation or true destruction is not possible except by the omnipotence of God) finding itself in these straits, turn and transform itself into strange shapes, passing from one change to another till it has gone through the whole circle and finished the period.”

“Nevertheless, in a passage that is very often commented upon because it summarizes the entire salvific economy of faith, the Apostle calls Christ the 'pioneer and perfecter of our faith' (Heb. 12:2), because he has to accomplish the same act as the Christian, only in the opposite direction, as it were. Whereas by venturing to let go of everything the Christian takes a stand beyond finitude and comes into the limitlessness of God, Christ, in order to make this act possible and to be its source, has dared to emerge from the infinitude of the 'form of God' and 'did not think equality with God a thing to be grasped,' has dared to set out into the limitation and emptiness of time. This involved a transcendence and a boundary crossing no less fundamental than that of the Christian, and Christ undertook it so as to entrust himself henceforth within time, with no guarantee or mitigation from eternity, to the Father's will, which is always given to him in the present moment.”

“Nevertheless, making up twisted stories was what she was all about, and really, the only thing she was good at. As well as keeping something from others is also what she was about to. Then one day it all changed, I got a knock on my front door, and by the time I got there, the woman was gone. They're sitting on my doorstep as my granddaughter… there she was alive in my sight. She was seven years old at that time; I recall that she was completely nude crying on my porch, and all she had on was Lily’s other childhood ribbon in her hair. Then when I saw the ribbon, I knew what happened. Then she leaped into my arms, and it was love for me from that point on! I remember that Kristen had smashed fingers, and cut up legs, they used a taser gun on her… as well as her butt and vulva were bleeding from being chewed, fondled, and penetrated repeatedly. She was sold many times by Ava and was used as a slave for others' thrills. She had to have virginity restoration surgery to regain her innocence so that someday she can be deflowered to whom she wants. She was only seven years old when the doctors put her under to do that, yet it was the right thing to do, for her. The doctor, Dr. Fennel, said that he never saw anything like what he saw with her in his whole time in practice. I did not care how much it cost, I knew what it was like to have that taken away and I did not want that for her to go through in her life.”

“Nevertheless, my contention is precisely that Homo sapiens sapiens possesses an innate, omnipresent, evolution-shaped predisposition for ordering its world, which among other things extends to form the foundation of mythology, metaphysics, and science. As with all other adaptive predispositions, this human propensity to construct interpretative mental frameworks of the world expresses itself as a powerful urge, a profound emotional need, which humans simply cannot help or do without. We are compulsive meaning seekers. It is this propensity -intertwined as it is with the evolution of symbolic representation and generalized conceptual thought- that is responsible for our species' remarkable career.”

“Nevertheless so profound is our ignorance, and so high our presumption, that we marvel when we hear of the extinction of an organic being; and as we do not see the cause, we invoke cataclysms to desolate the world, or invent laws on the duration of the forms of life!”

“Nevertheless, the chief thing is: Whatever the others surrounding you in a wide circle may say about you, in superior wisdom, in bestial (except that beasts are not like that) denseness, in diabolical kindness, in homicidal love - I, I, Milena, know to my last fibre that whatever you do you will be doing right, whether you stay in Vienna, or do now this, now that. What, after all, should I be doing with you if I didn't know this? As in the deep sea there is no tiniest spot that isn't always under the heaviest pressure, so it is with you, but any other life is a disgrace and makes me sick to think of; until recently I thought I couldn't endure life, couldn't endure people, and was very ashamed of it, but you confirm to me now that it wasn't life that seemed undendurable to me.”

“Nevertheless, the idea is deeply embedded in American Protestantism that the clergy go to seminary in order to become theologians. I recall, for example, giving a lecture at a seminary a while ago in which I made a remark which particularly agitated the Dean of the seminary, and he said to me, 'No responsible theologian would say what you just said!' That seemed to me reassuring news. A few days later I received a letter from someone who had been present at this exchange. The letter declared that the Dean had been mistaken and that in fact Soren Kierkegaard had written in his journals somewhere the substance of what I had said. I reported this comforting and distinguished citation to the Dean, who without hesitation announced: 'Oh, Kierkegaard is not a responsible theologian.' How could he be? He was no seminary professor. How could he know much about the mystery of God's presence in the world? Kierkegaard, after all, was only in the world - where God is - not in the seminary - where the theologians are!”

“Nevertheless, the radio continued to blare forth statistics demonstrating how under the visionary leadership of the gifted agronomist Krushchev, Soviet agriculture was overcoming the errors of Stalin and producing ever-larger quantities of meat, milk, butter, bread and other foodstuffs. If we have so much bread, why am I standing in line at four A.M., hoping I can buy some before it runs out? And Milk! There has been no milk in all Rubtsovsk for five days and no meat for two weeks. Well, as they say, if you want milk, just take your pail to the radio. But why does the radio keep announcing something which anybody with eyes knows is not true?”

“Nevertheless the severance is rather casual and it drops a stain on our admiration of Nora. Ibsen has put the leaving of her children on the same moral and emotional level as the leaving of her husband and we cannot, in our hearts, asssent to that. It is not only the leaving but the way the play does not have time for suffering, changes of heart. Ibsen has been too much a man in the end. He has taken the man's practice, if not his stated belief, that where self-realization is concerned children shall not be an impediment.”

“Nevertheless, there are many respects, in tiny and contemptible matters, where our curiosity is provoked every day. How often do we slip, who can count? How many times we initially act as if we put up with people telling idle tales in order not to offend the weak, but then gradually we find pleasure in listening. I now do not watch a dog chase a rabbit when this is happening at the circus. But if by chance I am passing when coursing occurs in the countryside, it distracts me perhaps indeed from thinking out some weighty matter. The hunt turns me to an interest in the sport, not enough to lead me to alter the direction of the beast I am riding, but shifting the inclination of my heart. Unless you had proved to me my infirmity and quickly admonished me either to take the sight as the start for some reflection enabling me to rise up to you or wholly to scorn and pass the matter by, I would be watching like an empty-headed fool. When I am sitting at home, a lizard catching flies or a spider entrapping them as they rush into its web often fascinates me. The problem is not made any different by the fact that the animals are small. The sight leads me on to praise you, the marvellous Creator and orderer of all things; but that was not how my attention first began. It is one thing to rise rapidly, another thing not to fall.”

“Nevertheless this was the problem Casanova solved. His prime secret is in his own words. “ I have always believed that when a man gets it into his head to do something, and when he exclusively occupies himself in that design, he must succeed whatever the difficulties. That man will become Grand Vizier or Pope. He will upset a dynasty, provided he starts young and has the brain and perseverance necessary. For when a man has arrived at the age that Chance despises he can no longer do anything ; for without her aid there is no hope.”

“Nevertheless we have this curious spectacle: daily the trained parrot in the pulpit gravely delivers himself of these ironies, which he has acquired at second-hand and adopted without examination, to a trained congregation which accepts them without examination, and neither the speaker nor the hearer laughs at himself. It does seem as if we ought to be humble when we are at a bench-show, and not put on airs of intellectual superiority there.”

“Nevertheless, we should take the worries about reducing theology to philosophy seriously. So what we need is a philosophical approach to Divine revelation that steers clear of two oposing forms of reductionism that we have encountered so far: On the one hand, a philosophical rationalism that aims at reducing articles of faith to philosophical principles, on the other hand, a theological fideism that takes itself to be free of the restrictions of rationality and reason, and despises rational analysis in matters of faith.”

“Nevertheless you did throw me over," said Jordan suddenly. "You threw me over on the telephone. I don't give a damn about you now but it was a new experience for me and I felt a little dizzy for a while." We shook hands. "Oh, and do you remember—" she added, "——a conversation we had once about driving a car?" "Why—not exactly." "You said a bad driver was only safe until she met another bad driver? Well, I met another bad driver, didn't I? I mean it was careless of me to make such a wrong guess. I thought you were rather an honest, straightforward person. I thought it was your secret pride." "I'm thirty," I said. "I'm five years too old to lie to myself and call it honor." She didn't answer. Angry, and half in love with her, and tremendously sorry, I turned away. (9.130-136)”

“Nevertheless, (Jefferson) believed that the habit of skepticism is an essential prerequisite for responsible citizenship. He argued that the cost of education is trivial compared to the cost of ignorance, of leaving government to the wolves. He taught that the country is safe only when the people rule.”