Plagiarism

I wanted to share, or more of catalogue, some of my favorite quotes from one of my favorite books. It's a list of things that gave me pause. I wanted to remember that pause and remember how each one made me feel. So here they are.

" 'an hour hence and you will not care. A day hence and you will laugh at it. Don't you remember on earth-there were things too hot to touch with your finger but you could drink them all right? Shame is like that. If you will accept it-if you will drink the cup to the bottom-you will find it very nourishing; but try to do anything else with it and it scalds.' "

" 'Son,' he said, 'ye cannot in your present state understand eternity; when Anodos looked through the door of the Timeless he brought no message back. But ye can get some likeness of it if ye say that both good and evil, when they are full grown, become retrospective. Not only this valley but all their earthly past will have been Heaven to those who are saved. Not only the twilight in that town, but all their life on earth too, will then be seen by the damned to have been Hell. That is what mortals misunderstand. They say of some temporal suffering, "no future bliss can make up for it," not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory. And of some sinful pleasure they say, "Let me have but this and I'll take the consequences": little dreaming how damnation will spread back and back into their past and contaminate the pleasure of the sin. Both processes begin even before death. The good man's past begins to change so that his forgiven sins and remembered sorrows take on the quality of Heaven; the bad man's past already conforms to his badness and is filled only with dreariness. And that is why, at the end of all things, when the sun rises here and the twilight turns to blackness down there, the Blessed will say "We have never lived anywhere except in Heaven," and the Lost, "We were always in Hell." And both will speak truly.' "

" 'The sensualist, I'll allow ye, begins by pursuing a real pleasure, though a small one. His sin is the less. But the time comes on when, though the pleasure becomes less and less and the craving fiercer and fiercer, and though he knows that joy can never come that way, yet her prefers to joy the mere fondling of unappeasable lust and would not have it taken from him. H'd fight to the death to keep it. He'd like well to be able to scratch; but even when he can scratch no more he'd rather itch than not.' "

"Everyone who wishes it does. Never fear. There are only two kinds of people in the end; those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, in the end, 'Thy will be done.' All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. To those who knock it is opened."

"The whole difficulty of understanding Hell is that the thing to be understood is so nearly Nothing. But ye'll have had experiences...it begins with a grumbling mood, and yourself still distinct from it; perhaps criticizing it. And yourself, in a dark hour, may will that mood, embrace it. Ye can repent and come out of it again. But there may come a day when you can do that no longer. Then there will be no you left to criticize the mood, nor even to enjoy it, but just the grumble itself going on forever like a machine."

"But the most part seemed to think that the mere fact of having contrived for themselves so much misery gave them a kid of superiority. 'You have led a sheltered life!' they bawled. 'You don't know the seamy side. We'll tell you. We'll give you some hard facts'-as if to tinge Heaven with infernal images and colors had been the only purpose for which they came."

And finally the interaction between Frank, his Tragedian, and the Gracious Woman. Such beautiful pictures reminding me of my sin and the beauty of full repentance to allow transformation of all that has been flooding into all that will be.