Quotes

This collection will grow over time.

Quotes on issues of faith, life, truth, and justice, etc.

FAITH

There are no ordinary people

“There are no ordinary people.  You have never talked to a mere mortal.  Nations, cultures, arts, civilization – these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat.  But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit – immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.”

– C.S. Lewis. The Weight of Glory. 1941.

LIFE

Measure your performance by how much better you made the people around you

“The most important measure of how good a game I’d played was how much better I’d made my teammates play.”

– Bill Russell. Inscription engraved on a block that stands with a statue of Mr. Russell at Boston’s City Hall Plaza

See John Hareas. “City of Boston celebrates Bill Russell: Player, activist, mentor.” NBA.com, 1 Nov. 2013, https://www.nba.com/news/bill-russell-city-of-boston.

Recover from your mistakes

“If you stumble, make it into a dance.”

– Inside a Dove candy wrapper

TRUTH

Read old books

“Every age has its own outlook.  It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes.  We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period.  And that means the old books. . . .  Not, of course, that there is any magic about the past.  People were no cleverer then than they are now; they made as many mistakes as we.  But not the same mistakes.  They will not flatter us in the errors we are already committing; and their own errors, being now open and palpable, will not endanger us.  Two heads are better than one, not because either is infallible, but because they are unlikely to go wrong in the same direction.  To be sure, the books of the future would be just as good a corrective as the books of the past, but unfortunately we cannot get at them.”

– C. S. Lewis. “Introduction” to On The Incarnation, a translation of Athanasius’s On the Incarnation of the Word of God. Translated by Sister Penelope Lawson, a nun in the order of the Convent of the Community of St. Mary the Virgin. Originally published in 1944. Current edition published by GLH Publishing, Louisville, KY, 2018, pp. 2-3. (Italics are in the original; boldface added. In the original publication, the translator was listed as “A Religious of C.S.M.V.”  Athanasius’s treatise was written prior to A.D. 319.)

JUSTICE

Justice, injustice, and democracy

“Man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible; but man’s inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.”

– Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971). In the foreword to The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness: A Vindication of Democracy and a Critique of Its Traditional Defense. 1944. University of Chicago Press, 2011, p. xi. (See Joseph E. Hartman. “Democracy and Sin: Doing Justice to Reinhold Niebuhr.” Academic Questions. Fall 2015. National Association of Scholars. https://www.nas.org/academic-questions/28/3/democracy_and_sin_doing_justice_to_reinhold_niebuhr#_ftnref27.)

(For clarity in the 21^st century, the quote is often rendered: “Humanity’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible; but humanity’s inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.”)

PURPOSE

God has created me to do Him some definite service; I have a mission

[A slightly shortened version of this is often printed with the title “The Mission of My Life”]

“1. God was all-complete, all-blessed in Himself; but it was His will to create a world for His glory.  He is Almighty, and might have done all things Himself, but it has been His will to bring about His purposes by the beings He has created.  We are all created to His glory – we are created to do His will.  I am created to do something or to be something for which no one else is created; I have a place in God’s counsels, in God’s world, which no one else has; whether I be rich or poor, despised or esteemed by man, God knows me and calls me by my name.

“2. God has created me to do Him some definite service; He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another.  I have my mission – I never may know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next.  Somehow I am necessary for His purposes, as necessary in my place as an Archangel in his – if, indeed, I fail, He can raise another, as He could make the stones children of Abraham.  Yet I have a part in this great work; I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons.  He has not created me for naught.  I shall do good, I shall do His work; I shall be an angel of peace, a preacher of truth in my own place, while not intending it, if I do but keep His commandments and serve Him in my calling.

“3. Therefore I will trust Him.  Whatever, wherever I am, I can never be thrown away.  If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him; in perplexity, my perplexity may serve Him; if I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him.  My sickness, or perplexity, or sorrow may be necessary causes of some great end, which is quite beyond us.  He does nothing in vain; He may prolong my life, He may shorten it; He knows what He is about.  He may take away my friends, He may throw me among strangers, He may make me feel desolate, make my spirits sink, hide the future from me – still He knows what He is about.”

– John Henry Newman (1801-1890). “Hope in God – Creator.” 7 Mar. 1848. In Part 3: Meditations on Christian Doctrine, in Meditations and Devotions of the late Cardinal Newman. Edited by Fr. William Neville. London: Longmans, Green, 1893. Newman Reader, https://www.newmanreader.org/works/meditations/meditations9.html.

THE POOR

Contact with the lowly and powerless is a fundamental way of encountering the Lord

“Love for the Lord, then, is one with love for the poor.  The same Jesus who tells us, ‘The poor you will always have with you’ (Mt 26:11), also promises the disciples: ‘I am with you always’ (Mt 28:20).  We likewise think of his saying: ‘Just as you did it to one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it to me’ (Mt 25:40).  This is not a matter of mere human kindness but a revelation: contact with those who are lowly and powerless is a fundamental way of encountering the Lord of history.  In the poor, he continues to speak to us.”

– Pope Leo XIV. Dilexi Te (Apostolic Exhortation on Love for the Poor). The Vatican, 4 Oct. 2025, https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/apost_exhortations/documents/20251004-dilexi-te.html, par. 5.

Love for God is not possible for the Christian without love for the poor

“In his new apostolic exhortation, Dilexi Te, Pope Leo . . . traces the uninterrupted centrality that the poor have played in the Church’s proclamation of the Gospel in every age and culture, and the rich legacy that the saints have left us in their comprehension that love for God is not possible for the Christian without love for the poor.”

– Robert McElroy (Cardinal of the Archdiocese of Washington). “Cardinal McElroy’s statement on Pope Leo XIV’s first apostolic exhortation ‘Dilexi Te.’” Archdiocese of Washigton, 9 Oct. 2025, https://adw.org/news/mcelroys-statement-dilexi-te/.