Humanists

"Who is this that comes in grandeur, coming from the blazing East? This is he we had not thought of, this is he the airy Christ."

"Why does my Muse only speak when she is unhappy? She does not, I only listen when I am unhappy."

"I wish I was more cheerful, it is more pleasant, Also it is a duty, we should smile as well as submitting To the purpose of One Above who is experimenting With various mixtures of human character which goes best, All is interesting for him it is exciting, but not for us. There I go again. Smile, smile, and get some work to do Then you will be practically unconscious without positively having to go."

"Was he married, did he try To support as he grew less fond of them Wife and family?"

"All things pass Love and mankind is grass."

"He did not love in the human way."

"This Englishwoman is so refined She has no bosom and no behind."

"Nobody heard him, the dead man, But still he lay moaning: I was much further out than you thought And not waving but drowning."

"To choose a god of love, as he did and does, Is a little move then? Yes, it is. A larger one will be when men Love love and hate hate but do not deify them? It will be a larger one."

"So I fancy my Muse says, when I wish to die, Oh no, Oh no, we are not yet friends enough, And Virtue also says: We are not yet friends enough."

"The religion of Christianity Is mixed of sweetness and cruelty Reject this Sweetness, for she wears A smoky dress out of hell fires."

"I made Man with too many faults. Yet I love him. And if he wishes, I have a home above for him."

"Humanity has emerged from its former degrees of limitation and preliminary training. Man must now become imbued with new virtues and powers, new moralities, new capacities. New bounties, bestowals and perfections are awaiting and already descending upon him."

"From every standpoint the world of humanity is undergoing a re-formation. The laws of former governments and civilizations are in process of revision, scientific ideas and theories are developing and advancing to meet a new range of phenomena, invention and discovery are penetrating hitherto unknown fields revealing new wonders and hidden secrets of the material universe; industries have vastly wider scope and production; everywhere the world of mankind is in the throes of evolutionary activity indicating the passing of the old conditions and advent of the new age of re-formation. Old trees yield no fruitage; old ideas and methods are obsolete and worthless now. Old standards of ethics, moral codes and methods of living in the past will not suffice for the present age of advancement and progress. This is the cycle of maturity and re-formation in religion as well. Dogmatic imitations of ancestral beliefs are passing. They have been the axis around which religion revolved but now are no longer fruitful; on the contrary, in this day they have become the cause of human degradation and hindrance. Bigotry and dogmatic adherence to ancient beliefs have become the central and fundamental source of animosity among men, the obstacle to human progress, the cause of warfare and strife, the destroyer of peace, composure and welfare in the world."

"In the great body of human society it is impossible to establish unity and coordination if one part is considered perfect and the other imperfect. When the perfect functions of both parts are in operation, harmony will prevail. God has created man and woman equal as to faculties. He has made no distinction between them."

"Love is the mystery of divine revelations! Love is the effulgent manifestation! Love is the spiritual fulfillment! Love is the breath of the Holy Spirit inspired into the human spirit! Love is the cause of the manifestation of the Truth (God) in the phenomenal world! Love is the necessary tie proceeding from the realities of things through divine creation! Love is the means of the most great happiness in both the material and spiritual worlds! Love is a light of guidance in the dark night! Love is the bond between the Creator and the creature in the inner world! Love is the cause of development to every enlightened man! Love is the greatest law in this vast universe of God! Love is the one law which causeth and controleth order among the existing atoms! Love is the universal magnetic power between the planets and stars shining in the loft firmament! Love is the cause of unfoldment to a searching mind, of the secrets deposited in the universe by the Infinite! Love is the spirit of life in the bountiful body of the world! Love is the cause of the civilization of nations in this mortal world! Love is the highest honor to every righteous nation! The people who are confirmed therein are indeed glorified by the Supreme Concourse, the angels of heaven and the dwellers of the Kingdom of El-Abha! But if the hearts of the people become devoid of the Divine Grace — the Love of God — they wander in the desert of ignorance, descend to the depths of ruin and fall to the abyss of despair where there is no refuge! They are like insects living in the lowest plane. O beloved of God! Be ye the manifestations of God and the lamps of guidance throughout all regions shining with the light of love and union! How beautiful the effulgence of this light!"

"Act in such a way that your heart may be free from hatred. Let not your heart be offended with anyone. If someone commits an error and wrong toward you, you must instantly forgive him. Do not complain of others. Refrain from reprimanding them, and if you wish to give admonition or advice, let it be offered in such a way that it will not burden the bearer. Turn all your thoughts toward bringing joy to hearts. Beware! Beware! Lest ye offend any heart. Assist the world of humanity as much as possible. Be the source of consolation to every sad one, assist every weak one, be helpful to every indigent one, care for every sick one, be the cause of glorification to every lowly one, and shelter those who are overshadowed by fear."

"Most literary prizes are only nominally about literature. They are really about brand consolidation for beer companies, phone companies, coffee companies and even frozen food companies."

"As a reader, I want to claim fellowship with "good writing" without limits; to be able to say that Hurston is my sister and Baldwin is my brother, and so is Kafka my brother, and Nabokov, and Woolf my sister, and Eliot and Ozick. Like all readers, I want my limits to be drawn by my own sensibilities, not by my melanin count."

"The more blessed she felt on earth, the more rarely she turned to heaven."

"You hear girls in the toilets of clubs saying, 'Yeah, he fucked off and left me. He just couldn't deal with love. He was too fucked up to know how to love me.' Now how did that happen? What was it about this unlovable century that convinced us we were, despite everything, eminently lovable as a people, as a species? What made us think that anyone who fails to love us is damaged, lacking, malfunctioning in some way? And particularly if they replace us with a god, or a weeping madonna, or the face of Christ in a ciabatta roll—then we call them crazy. Deluded. Regressive. We are so convinced of the goodness of ourselves, and the goodness of our love, we cannot bear to believe that there might be something more worthy of love than us, more worthy of worship. Greeting cards routinely tell us everybody deserves love. No. Everybody deserves clean water. Not everybody deserves love all the time."

"His mind was a small thing with big holes through which passions regularly seeped out."

"The thinnest covering of luck was on him like fresh dew. While he slipped in and out of consciousness, the position of the planets, the music of the spheres, the flap of a tiger moth's diaphanous wings in Central Africa, and a whole bunch of other stuff that makes shit happen had decided it was second-chance time for Archie."

"So we have to be a bit more, I mean, military about it, like plan."

"You always wanted to make it clear you weren't like the rest of us. You're still doing it."

"In a whisper he began begging for—and, as the sun set, received—the concession people always beg for: a little more time."

"But to me, an exercise in style is not a superficial matter – our lives are also an exercise in style."

"He was bookish, she was not; he was theoretical, she political. She called a rose a rose. He called it an accumulation of cultural and biological constructions circulating around the mutually attracting binary poles of nature/artifice."

"[Q:] What moves you most in a literary work? [A:] Ingenuity, honesty, perversity, bravery and — I must admit — natural talent. I feel the same wonder at a brilliant debut as I do watching Simone Biles doing her back flips."

"It was in the shady groves of dictionaries that Jack fell in love."

"You don't have favorites among your children but you do have allies."

"[Q:] What kind of reader were you as a child? Which childhood books and authors stick with you most? [A:] the writers that meant most to me: Alice Walker, Roald Dahl, Charlotte Brontë, Dickens, Noel Streatfeild, Andrew Salkey, L. Maud Montgomery, Louisa May Alcott. Toni Morrison because of The Black Book, which she edited — and I read, at a very delicate age, 9 or 10. But C. S. Lewis above all."

"He traced the genealogy of the feeling"

"The greatest lie ever told about love is that it sets you free."

"His death is like the soft down on the back of your hand, passing unnoticed in the firmest of handshakes, though the slightest breeze makes every damn one of the tiny hairs stand on end."

"A carefully preserved English accent also upped the fear factor."

"But, when I open newspapers and see students dismissing the idea that some of their fellow-students feel, at this particular moment, unsafe on campus, or arguing that such a feeling is simply not worth attending to, given the magnitude of what is occurring in Gaza, I find such sentiments cynical and unworthy of this movement. For it may well be—within the ethical zone of interest that is a campus, which was not so long ago defined as a safe space, delineated by the boundary of a generation’s ethical ideas—it may well be that a Jewish student walking past the tents, who finds herself referred to as a Zionist, and then is warned to keep her distance, is, in that moment, the weakest participant in the zone."

"… dressed all in yellow spreading warmth and the promise of sex."

"… and catholics give out forgiveness at the same time politicians give out promises and whores give out."

"..and the devil won another easy hand in God's poker game."

"Is there anything more likely to take the shine off an affair that when the lover strikes up a convivial relationship with the lovee's mother."

"This is what divorce is: Taking things you no longer want from people you no longer love."

"A past tense, future perfect kind of night."

"Ryan's freckles were a join-the-dot's enthusiast's wet dream."

"But why do they always have to be laughing and making a song-and-dance about everything? I cannot believe homosexuality is that much fun. Heterosexuality certainly is not."

"He talked and talked, the kind of talking you do to stave off the inevitable physical desire. The kind of talk that only increases it."

"Revelation is where all crazy people end up. It's the last stop on the nutso express."

"Because this is the other thing about immigrants: they cannot escape their history any more than you yourself can lose your shadow."

"It has been one of Mr Kinnock's themes that Labour has to modernise itself, that it has to appeal not only to the man on the dole but to the man with a mortgage, not only to a manual labourer, but to a computer expert; it has to redefine its idea of class to accommodate social trends."

"In the Financial Times this morning Mrs Thatcher was reported as saying that two more terms of office would exterminate socialism. I saw Clare Short, who asked if I had seen it, and I replied, "Yes, but I think she'll have a job to outdo Kinnock.""