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T Quotes

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All T Quotes

“The world had always loved the saint as being the nearest possible approach to the perfection of God. Christ, through some divine instinct in him, seems to have always loved the sinner as being the nearest possible approach to the perfection of man. His primary desire was not to reform people, any more than his primary desire was to a relieve suffering. To turn an interesting thief into a tedious honest man was not his aim. He would have thought little of the Prisoners’ Aid Society and other modern movements of the kind. The conversion of a publican into a Pharisee would not have seemed to him a great achievement. But in a manner not yet understood of the world he regarded sin and suffering as being in themselves beautiful holy things and modes of perfection. It seems a very dangerous idea. It is — all great ideas are dangerous. That it was Christ’s creed admits of no doubt. That it is the true creed I don’t doubt myself. Of course the sinner must repent. But why? Simply because otherwise he would be unable to realise what he had done. The moment of repentance is the moment of initiation. More than that: it is the means by which one alters one’s past. The Greeks thought that impossible. They often say in their Gnomic aphorisms, ‘Even the Gods cannot alter the past.’ Christ showed that the commonest sinner could do it, that it was the one thing he could do. Christ, had he been asked, would have said — I feel quite certain about it — that the moment the prodigal son fell on his knees and wept, he made his having wasted his substance with harlots, his swine-herding and hungering for the husks they ate, beautiful and holy moments in his life. It is difficult for most people to grasp the idea. I dare say one has to go to prison to understand it. If so, it may be worth while going to prison.”

“The world had changed its attire in spring and what it was wearing now was a perfect fit to what it was deep inside: a controlling old slag who didn't care about anyone’s wishes and would ignore everyone who wouldn't live by her rules. Tom was finished with that cunt: the world behind the fogged up windows. He used to live in one of his own: a dirty but well-protected one that nobody had ever entered, since everyone who even tried was to be shot before they could make it over the threshold.”

“The world had changed its attire last spring and what it was wearing now was a perfect fit to what it was deep inside: a controlling old slag who didn't care about anyone’s wishes and ignored everyone who won't live by her rules. Tom was finished with that cunt: the world behind the fogged up windows. He used to live in one of his own: a dirty, but well-protected world that no one had ever entered and everyone who even tried was to get shot before they made it over the threshold. ~ As the moon began to rust”

“The world has a very serious problem, my friend' Shiva went on. 'Poor children still die by their millions. Westerners and the global rich -- like me -- live in post-scarcity society, while a billion people struggle to get enough to eat. And we're pushing the planet towards a tipping point, where the corals die and the forests burn and life becomes much, much harder. We have the resources to solve those problems, even now, but politics and economics and nationalism all get in the way. If we could access all those minds, though...”

“The world has always been a dangerous place. Now it is dangerous in a different way, because the world order that we've known since the end of the Cold War has been radically transformed. All of the institutions that preserved peace and promoted global trade will be weaker - NATO, the EU, NAFTA - and US relationships with other countries will change, too.”

“The world has always needed human beings who refuse to believe that history is nothing but a dull, monstrous selfrepetition, a selfperpetuating, meaningless game, only varied in outer garb, who cannot be converted from their conviction that history signifies progress in morality, that our race is ascending on an invisible ladder from an animal nature towards divinity, from brutal violence to the wisely ordering intellect, and that the ultimate stage of complete understanding is already close at hand, indeed has almost been attained.”