All Quotes

"So then, after the Lord had spoken to them, He was received up into heaven, and sat down at the right hand of God."

"“It’s not about the bashers kasi it’s something internal, e. Some people like me just don’t like the idea of being under the limelight that much. And I was young then and I didn’t handle it that well.”"

"[In the land Mongols prefer to call Southern Mongolia,] Mongolians have demonstrated “remarkable creativity and resilience” in preserving their culture despite intense pressure. They continue to write, sing, teach, and protest—even if they sometimes must do this by sending handwritten images in encrypted chats. Their goal is straightforward: to tell their own stories in their own language and ensure that Mongolian words, poems, and songs persist as vibrant expressions of a people who refuse to be redefined. [The PEN America report] “Save Our Mother Tongue” is a timely reminder that languages are more than communication tools; they are vessels of memory, humor, longing, and identity. To erase a language is to erase a worldview. Fighting for a language asserts that a people’s story is ongoing, regardless of how many websites are shut down or playlists rewritten."

"The trial of the Famille Missionnaire de Notre-Dame (FMND), which concluded its hearings in Privas on January 22 and now awaits a verdict on March 24, has become a significant moment in the development of French criminal law. What started as a disagreement between five former sisters and a traditional Catholic community has turned into a demonstration of how far the ideas of “abuse of weakness” (abus de faiblesse) and “cultic deviances” (dérives sectaires) can be stretched. It shows how easily they can be used to regulate religious life. Bitter Winter [has] previously presented the case and warned that these legal concepts amount to a rebranding of the old discredited “brainwashing” theories, which were rejected by courts in the United States and most democratic countries. The FMND case proves that these concerns are not just theoretical."

"After that, He appeared in another form to two of them as they walked and went into the country. And they went and told it to the rest, but they did not believe them either."

"Now behold, two of them were traveling that same day to a village called Emmaus, which was seven miles from Jerusalem. And they talked together of all these things which had happened. So it was, while they conversed and reasoned, that Jesus Himself drew near and went with them. 16 But their eyes were restrained, so that they did not know Him."

"Then He said to them, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken! Ought not the Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into His glory?” And beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself."

"After the supper with Him, the disciples of Emmaus, leaving behind their sadness and confusion, ran back to the newly born Christian community to proclaim the joyful news of their having seen the Risen Lord."

"And He led them out as far as Bethany, and He lifted up His hands and blessed them. Now it came to pass, while He blessed them, that He was parted from them and carried up into heaven. And they worshiped Him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and were continually in the temple praising and blessing God. Amen."

"It came to pass in those days that Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee, and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And immediately, coming up from the water, He saw the heavens parting and the Spirit descending upon Him like a dove."

"Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan to be baptized by him. And John tried to prevent Him, saying, “I need to be baptized by You, and are You coming to me?”"

"When all the people were baptized, it came to pass that Jesus also was baptized; and while He prayed, the heaven was opened. And the Holy Spirit descended in bodily form like a dove upon Him, and a voice came from heaven which said, “You are My beloved Son; in You I am well pleased.”"

"Girl... hindi ka niya hahabulin hangga't di ka umaalis. That's all. (Girl... he won't chase you until you leave.)"

"Nobody is your friend until they defend your name in your absence."

"I'm sure napaka-fulfilling na trabaho na maging ina. Pero para piliting mangyari 'yun or ma-feel na hindi ako parang binigyan ng gift na ganun? It's a blessing from the Lord talaga, nakalagay naman 'yan, children are gift from God. (I'm sure being a mother is a very fulfilling job. But to force that to happen or to feel like I wasn't given such a gift? It's really a blessing from the Lord, it's written there, children are a gift from God.)"

"Hindi naman tayo pare-parehong mga tao. Hindi tayo pare-pareho ng pinagdaanan. (We are not all the same people. We have not gone through the same experiences)."

"Ayoko nga ng sikat. Ang hirap-hirap kaya ng sikat. (I don't want to be famous. It's actually very hard to be famous)."

"Hindi naman ibibigay ni God lahat!, (God doesn't give us everything!),You can't have it all!"

"And when eight days were completed for the circumcision of the Child, His name was called Jesus, the name given by the angel before He was conceived in the womb."

"Fourthly and finally, there is the sign of circumcision, which Christ deigned to accept on this day. He wanted to be circumcised for many reasons. For himself, to show us that he had taken on a real body, knowing that there would be those who would argue that he had not taken on a real body but a fantastical one; therefore, to refute this error, he wanted to be circumcised and shed blood. For an imaginary body does not shed blood. For us, to show us that we must be circumcised in spirit."

"[...] for Schiller, art is the culmination of the life of the spirit and rational ethical conscience is only one aspect of it, having to integrate with sensitivity. Schiller, like Kant, maintains that moral action must be motivated not by sensory impulses but by reason. (from “'Logos”', II fascicle p. 115)"

"The first seed of Schiller's theory of art as free play is found in Kant. [...] Schiller draws from Kant his fundamental motive for play as a free activity, that is, without constraint, without the serious purpose of satisfying a sensible need, of constructing objective knowledge or of achieving a moral end."

"For Schiller, freedom means precisely the absence of constraint, not only physical but also moral; because even duty constrains us painfully when it conflicts with sensible impulse, as in Kantian rigorism. Aesthetic freedom for Schiller is something more than moral freedom: the latter would indeed be a liberation from sensible impulses, but it would place us under the rule of a law imposed on our human nature. Aesthetic freedom also frees us from the suffering of this constraint, making us feel that ethical law is in accordance with our natural inclination."

"As if it were Trento in the first decade of the 20th century, just before the war that was to “return” it (!) to Italy, it may seem strange and paradoxical, but I – a Florentine and Tuscan by birth, I believe, from the middle Valdarno area for several generations (people who came from Signa, perhaps as far away as Pescia in Valdinievole) – know this quite well. I know a few things about this city of about thirty thousand inhabitants, which even for those in the region must have seemed like a semi-metropolis, if only because it looked like a city and not a large village. And to some extent, in addition to the beautiful and severe memories of its prince-bishops who had embellished it over the centuries and the Habsburg imprint that had been strong since 1777, when the prerogatives of temporal power had passed to Empress Maria Theresa, was the strong garrison of the imperial army, with 3,000 soldiers who alone made up 10% of the population. Between the Italian population and the Austro-Germans (officers and civil servants, above all, as well as a few innkeepers and tailors who served the garrison), there was a relationship of correct neighbourliness, but also of mutual segregation. It was not that they hated each other, but rather that they ignored each other."

"How can we talk about the system born of the Enlightenment as the best of all possible worlds, when we all know that communism and Nazism are also children of the Enlightenment? We can even say that they are degenerate children, fine: but when we have historical evidence showing us that there are no optimal systems, from what perspective can we continue down this path?"

"It is dignity that forms the basis of authentic and non-abstract equality: a possible and concrete equality, since absolute and perfect equality does not exist and, if it did, it would be horrible."

"It is true that there was already a divide between the north and the south, but it is no less true that the unification of Italy was paradoxically achieved by accentuating this divide. The real industrial take-off of the north took place with money and labour from the south, and this gap has actually widened. The fight against brigandage was something horrible. The royal army, the royal carabinieri and the royal bersaglieri behaved like a colonial army. These things need to be said and taught in schools."

"(About Costanzo Preve) [...] a philosopher of profound, rigorous and severe training, is, on the other hand, a citizen who knows well that civic courage, far from being a virtue, is simply a duty; and that study can never be an alibi for hiding in well-tended inner gardens while, around us, iron and fire are unleashed."

"The truly historical character – also and perhaps even above all from the point of view of civil, social and ethical history: “national identity”, as we would say today – of Camporesi's reading of Artusi is particularly highlighted and, so to speak, summarised in the famous statement by Camporesi that “”'Science in the Kitchen'“ did more for national unification than ”'I Promessi Sposi . Artusi's tastes, in fact, succeeded in creating a code of national identification where Manzoni's stylistic and phonetic features failed."

"The Great Conspiracy, we can be (almost) certain, does not exist; there is no Table (neither round nor of any other geometric shape) around which Unknown Superiors sit. But there are plenty of plans and programmes formulated to serve the particular interests of lobbies and corporations by individuals and groups who count outside and above internal and international legality, however much the mass media try to prevent their existence and activities from becoming known. [...] In other words, one might ask what is the relationship between the actual power held and exercised today by the government of the United States of America and the process of globalisation. But in these terms, the question is poorly posed. The real and fundamental question is another: what are the real forces that support, partly control and partly directly constitute the government of the United States of America? Whose sovereign power does it represent, whose sovereign will does it execute, beyond the legal forms designed to legitimise it? Does it hold “imperial” power? Or is there, behind it, as behind other forces currently “present” in the world, an “invisible empire” that is in fact irresponsible – in the etymological sense of the term: that is, it is not accountable, it does not have to answer for its actions because no one is in a position to call it to account – before its subjects, who do not even know (or, at least, not clearly) that they are such?"

"The new Koranic spring, which we are witnessing in recent years, is a blessing for the world: also, and above all, for the other two Abrahamic faiths. Western modernity has caused a spread of agnosticism and atheism, which has undermined faith in God, but it has not eradicated forms of paganism, which have in fact resurfaced [...]. Believers in the God of Abraham throughout the world cannot but welcome the Muslim renaissance – beyond the political phenomena that accompany it but remain only ambiguously connected to it – as a revival of faith that was unthinkable only a few decades ago. [...] the faithful cannot but look with hope and confidence to every place where Almighty God, Creator of Heaven and Earth, is worshipped and prayed to, and where the covenant He made with Abraham, to which He has remained faithful, is strengthened day by day. The God of Abraham, Moses, Jesus and Muhammad."

"In the festival [...] the arcane becomes everyday, the mystery becomes visible. Who said there is no longer any place for myth?"

"We have no scientific reason to argue that one system is better than another, unless we rely on historical determinism or the law of the jungle, whereby the winner is right because he wins."

"When the idea of national unity was chosen in the nineteenth century, the identity of the peninsula, which had always been polycentric, was not respected. Naples never referred to Italy, but to the Mediterranean and Europe. The Neapolitans called themselves “regnicoli” (subjects of the kingdom), never Italians, and they were not."

"I know that mine, here and in this context, is a difficult task. Catholic, traditionalist, a man of order and with a strong sense of state, I could perhaps still call myself “right-wing”. For years I have not considered myself or described myself in this way, but I see that people continue to label me as such. I confess that this annoys me a little, but I let it go. But my commitment to social justice and my staunch Europeanism prevent me from feeling the slightest sympathy for a right wing that has now almost unanimously chosen the most unbridled liberalism and Atlanticism and that often flaunts a hypocritical, instrumental pro-Catholicism, revealing that they consider the Catholic Church to be nothing more than a bulwark of the established order (their “order”) and conformist right-thinking."

"[...] there are things in the media that can be spoken ill of with impunity: the Middle Ages is one of them. And this is done in order to speak ill of Christianity, which everyone feels entitled to spit on."

"Since 1965, I have not joined any political parties, although I feel a strong regret at not being able to identify with any of those available to me on the European scene. For many years now, I have simply defined myself as Catholic, pro-European and socialist. :*Introduction to “'Neofascismo e neoantifascismo”', La Vela, Viareggio, 2018."

"4 Q. Why is it said of Jesus Christ that He ascended, and of His Most Holy Mother that she was assumed, into heaven?"

"He was a great philologist and had edited the critical edition of Beowulf. In short, he was a remarkable scholar who suddenly wrote a novel: a path made famous in Italy by Umberto Eco, but well rooted in the Romantic and nineteenth-century tradition."

"Tolkien was a member of the Oxford Christians, a Catholic and a conservative. He was part of that rural solidarity movement, linked to the neighbourhood and traditions, which has been important in English politics since the time of Coleridge. The “Shire” in the book is an idealised England, which is ultimately destroyed by rampant industrialisation. Moreover, Tolkien was anything but simple politically: he was conservative, yes, but anti-totalitarian. Letters to Father Christmas is in fact a book against Hitler. If this seems obvious, it is worth remembering that in 1930s England, many Catholics of South African origin - like Tolkien - were pro-Hitler. He, on the other hand, understood very well the demonic, Faustian aspect of Nazism."

"The paradoxical thing is that Tolkien, now a mass phenomenon, was a niche writer: he wrote by hand and did the illustrations for his books himself. Above all, he wrote not only for himself, but also for his colleagues and students at Oxford, for people trained to recognise all the references and quotations. In short, he wrote for an elite, and it is worth bearing this in mind when reading him today."

"I owe my love for the Middle Ages first and foremost to Joan of Arc."

"Why Joan? Why this girl in the 15th century, clad in iron and burned at the stake by order of the Inquisition, then rehabilitated by a subsequent ruling, then canonised [...], later becoming an emblem first of traditionalist Catholics, then of anti-clerical populists, then of the right, then of the left, then of patriotic gatherings, then of feminist movements? Does it make sense to revive, at the turn of the second and third millennia, this young woman born on the borders of France and elevated to a central symbol of the French nation [...]? (p. 3)"

"My Joan is that of a boy who loved parish cinemas and those in the suburbs – the only ones he could afford – between the 1940s and 1950s. For this reason, she will forever have the face of Ingrid Bergman, discovered shortly after 1952 in Fleming's Technicolour blockbuster – admired, moreover, in a cut-up third version – and then seen again, in a completely different interpretation and with a very different intensity, in Roberto Rossellini's 1954 film, which, through the text of Paul Claudel, reinterpreted the allegories of medieval sacred representations. (p. 4)"

"But, between Fleming and Rossellini, I had discovered France [...] during a school trip in 1953 [...]. And that young woman, gilded in gold, high on the great horse of the monument in Place des Pyramides, fascinated me; just as I was moved by the images taken almost entirely from Ingres's swift painting and replicated in a thousand ways [...] in all the churches of France. (p. 4)"

"The Maid of Orléans [...] continues to jealously guard her maidenhood, the intimate and profound core of her vocation. I am left with a deep doubt that I have not understood her: but running after her, retracing old written pages and old paths between the Vosges and Normandy, has perhaps helped me to rediscover a part of myself that I thought was lost or vanished. For this too I must be grateful to her. (p. 6)"

"For me it would be the first one. The final question asked was who was the influential person, it’s more personal. It’s easier to answer something that’s personal and nothing scripted and about the war and something heavy. So for me, if you answer something that comes from your heart, it’s easy, the flow is very easy. You know like your values, go back to your personal life, your core values, it's easy to answer that."

"There’s a part of me in every I write, whether it’s male or female, because everything has to go through me. Everything I’ve observed or heard or whatever—it all has to go through me. I’m the one who makes these people up, and so there’s a part of me in some form in all of these people, but I really have made them up. But they’re so real to me, you know? By the time I’m done with them on the page, they’re very, very real to me. They’re just as real to me as anybody that I’ve ever met."

"Success did come to me later, but that was okay, I could feel myself getting better with each story or book. Age does matter to me — but that doesn’t mean it has to matter to all writers. It matters to me because as I age my work gets better, but more importantly, I live through more things and see more things, and therefore have more things to say."

"I’ve always been fascinated with this sense that every single person walking down the street has a whole story. It’s so interesting to think about the vast variety of things that can take place within one person’s life, and how nobody ever really knows it, because we only tell parts of our story to different people, and oh, I just want to know it so much! I always have, so I make it up."