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 “A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.”

― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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"True observers of nature, although they may think differently, will still agree that everything that is, everything that is observable as a phenomenon, can only exhibit itself in one of two ways. It is either a primal polarity that is able to unify, or it is a primal unity that is able to divide. The operation of nature consists of splitting the united or uniting the divided; this is the eternal movement of systole and diastole of the heartbeat, the inhalation and exhalation of the world in which we live, act, and exist." -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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"A man cannot speak to his son but as a father; to his wife but as a husband; to his enemy but upon terms: whereas a friend may speak as the case requires, and not as it sorteth with the person." — Francis Bacon, from "Of Friendship". 

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"If we demand perfection or nothing, we will have nothing." — Francis Schaeffer

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"Don't bend; don't water it down; don't try to make it logical; don't edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly." — #FranzKafka

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"Our greatest fear should not be of failure, but of succeeding at something that doesn't really matter." — D. L. Moody

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"History shows that when religion and politics get in bed together, violence is their love child." — Bruxy Cavey, The End of Religion: Encountering the Subversive Spirituality of Jesus. 

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 "[A] man's reach should exceed his grasp, [o]r what's a heaven for?" — Robert Browning 

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"That is what life is: a chain reaction of individuals colliding with others and influencing their lives without realizing it. A decision that seems minuscule to you, may be monumental to the fate of the world." -- J. D. Stroube

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"We human beings are vulnerable to many kinds of affliction and most of us are at some time afflicted by serious ills. How we cope is only in small part up to us. It is most often to others that we owe our survival, let alone our flourishing, as we encounter bodily illness and injury, inadequate nutrition, mental defect and disturbance, and human aggression and neglect. This dependence on particular others for protection and sustenance is most obvious in early childhood and in old age. But between these first and last stages our lives are characteristically marked by longer or shorter periods of injury, illness or other disablement, and some among us are disabled for their entire lives." -- Alasdair MacIntyre

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"Spirit animates matter; matter expresses spirit. This synergy is the soul." 

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“To make injustice the only measure of our attention is to praise the devil.” – Jack Gilbert

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If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?

The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956 (1973) by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is

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"The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either -- but right through every human heart -- and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained." -- Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Gulag Archipelagox

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Three thought-provoking quotes from Jeff McMahan's article Innocence, Self-Defense and Killing in War:

Three thought-provoking quotes from Jeff McMahan's article Innocence, Self-Defense and Killing in War:

...it is not obvious why a political leader who orders troops into battle is engaged in causing harm while voters in a democracy who demand that the leader should do so are not; or why drivers who transport arms to the troops count as combatants while the taxpayers who provide the arms by paying for them do not; or why a soldier who is asleep or sitting at a desk well behind the lines can be regarded as threatening or causing harm when a civilian editorialist who stirs support for the war is not...

*

Persons who join the military are typically aware that this abdication of moral autonomy is a condition of military life; indeed, some join the military in part in order to enjoy the freedom from responsibility. They know, in short, that they are allowing themselves to become instruments of the wills of others. There is, moreover, something else they could know with a little reflection, which is that most wars in which people fight are unjust. This follows from the assumption that a war can be just on at most one side, though it can be unjust on both.

Even if this formal assumption is unwarranted, it does seem true as a contingent fact that very few wars, if any, have been just on both sides, while, as Anscombe puts it, “human pride, malice and cruelty are so usual that. . . wars have mostly been mere wickedness on both sides.” Putting these two points together, we arrive at the conclusion that, in joining the military, one allows oneself to become an instrument for the violent pursuit of purposes that are more than likely to be unjust. How can this possibly be a morally acceptable thing to do? Of course, in many cases, the pressure to join the military may be nearly as strong as the pressure, once one is in the military, to surrender the prerogative of determining for oneself whether or not the war in which one is asked to fight is just. It is only when this is true that there can be a convincing case for regarding an Unjust Combatant as morally innocent. For, otherwise, following one’s superiors into an unjust war is roughly analogous to committing a crime while drunk: one may not be responsible for one’s action given one’s condition at the time, but one’s conduct nevertheless remains culpable because of one’s responsibility for getting oneself into a condition of diminished responsibility.

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First, the morality of war, and not the rules of war, is what should govern the conscience of the individual soldier. In particular, if the individual soldier has reason to believe or suspect that his country’s war is unjust, this is equivalent to believing or suspecting that his action as a belligerent in this war is or would be murderous. If he is convinced that the war is unjust, then he must not participate.

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“When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.” ― Haruki Murakami

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"The real violence, the violence I realized was unforgivable, is the violence that we do to ourselves, when we're too afraid to be who we really are." -- Sense8, S1E9.

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"Every problem in the world is the result of broken relationships." — Dean Schurmann

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I really like this quote of Juergen Moltmann:

"What anxiety and hope actually have in common is a sense of what is possible. In anxiety we anticipate possible danger. In hope we anticipate possible deliverance."

Anxiety anticipates a negative future, whereas hope anticipates a positive one. Both are, however, essentially the same thing: an anticipation of possibilities.

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"Because we think that practical help - the deed, the action - is the only answer we have to give to suffering, pain and fear. But compassion, sharing another person's guilt, grieving with him and standing by him when he is dying, demands a solidarity that goes beyong activism and the illusion that there is something to be *done* about everything." -- Juergen Moltmann