The whole point of the story of Cornelius and of the admission of the Gentiles lies in the fact that these people had not accepted what up to that moment had been considered a necessary part of the Christian teaching. The question was whether they could be admitted without accepting the teaching and undergoing the rite. It was that question which was settled by the acknowledgement that they had received the Holy Spirit... The difficulty today is that Christians acknowledge that others have the Spirit, and yet do not recognize that they ought to be, and must be -- because spiritually they are -- in communion with one another. Men who hold a theory of the Church which excludes from communion those whom they admit to have the Spirit of Christ simply proclaim that their theory is in flat contradiction to the spiritual fact.

What power had I before I learned to yield? Shatter me Great Wind! I shall possess the field! Richard Wilbur a stanza from his poem To A Milkweed.

A justice with grave justices shall sit; He praise their wisdom, they admire his wit.

The world began without man, and it will complete itself without him.

'Tis enough-- Who listens once will listen twice; Her heart be sure is not of ice, And one refusal no rebuff.

October's child is born for woe, And life's vicissitudes must know; But lay on Opal on her breast, And hope will lull those woes to rest.

A wasted youth is better by far than a wise and productive old age.

Sure there are poets which did never dream Upon Parnassus, nor did taste the stream Of Helicon; we therefore may suppose Those made not poets, but the poets those.

The world is full of cactus, but we don't have to sit on it.

I know, when they prove bad, they are a sort of the vilest creatures: yet still the same reason gives it: for Optima corrupta pessima: the best things corrupted become the worst.

No question is so difficult to answer as that to which the answer is obvious.

Even in a time of elephantine vanity and greed, one never has to look far to see the campfires of gentle people.

These are the gloomy comparisons of a disturbed imagination; the melancholy madness of poetry, without the inspiration.

Passion is universal humanity. Without it religion, history, romance and art would be useless.

BOUNDARY, n. In political geography, an imaginary line between two nations, separating the imaginary rights of one from the imaginary rights of the other.

His love at once and dread instruct our thought; As man He suffer'd and as God He taught.

Don't play for safety--it's the most dangerous thing in the world.

The most effective way to achieve right relations with any living thing is to look for the best in it, and then help that best into the fullest expression.

Love is the greatest thing that God can give us; for Himself is love: and it is the greatest thing we can give to God; for it will also give ourselves, and carry with it all that is ours. The apostle calls it the band of perfection; it is the old, and it is the new, and it is the great commandment, and it is all the commandments; for it is the fulfilling of the Law. It does the work of all the graces without any instrument but its own immediate virtue. For as the love of sin makes a man sin against all his own reason, and all the discourses of wisdom, and all the advices of his friends, and without temptation and without opportunity, so does the love of God: it makes a man chaste without the laborious arts of fasting and exterior disciplines, temperate in the midst of feasts, and is active enough to choose it without any intermedial appetites, and reaches at glory through the very heart of grace, without any other aims but those of love. It is a grace that loves God for Himself, and our neighbors for God. The consideration of God's goodness and bounty, the experience of those profitable and excellent emanations from Him, may be, and most commonly are, the first motive of our love; but when we are once entered, and have tasted the goodness of God, we love the spring for its own excellency, passing from passion to reason, from thanking to adoring, from sense to spirit, from considering ourselves to union with God: and this is the image and little representation of heaven; it is beatitude in picture, or rather the infancy and beginning of glory.

There are two types of people. Those we who come into a room and say, "Well, here I am!" and those who come in and say, "Ah, there you are.".