Morris West: Being

Morris West was Australian writer. Explore interesting quotes on being.

Morris West: 72 quotes3 likes

“Rossini was gentle with her. "In one way or another, we all have to cope with the essential solitude of being human, whether we're celibate or married."
"If you're a good person, doesn't God fill your loneliness?"
"He fills it, I think, with a divine discontent."”

Cardinal Luca Rossini and his daughter Luisa Ortega in Ch. 7
Eminence (1998)

“It costs so much to be a full human being that there are very few who have the enlightenment, or the courage, to pay the price…. One has to abandon altogether the search for security, and reach out to the risk of living with both arms. One has to embrace the world like a lover, and yet demand no easy return of love. One has to accept pain as a condition of existence. One has to court doubt and darkness as the cost of knowing. One needs a will stubborn in conflict, but apt always to the total acceptance of every consequence of living and dying.”

The Shoes of the Fisherman (1963)

“You I admire as being more, — much more — a man, and more believer too, than half the canting orthodox.”

The Heretic (1968)

“I once asked a distinguished biologist to explain to me the genetic imprint, the famous double helix which differentiates one being from another. He called it "the graffito of God", because it can never be erased. All other imprints — of memory, environment, experience — he called "human graffiti."”

Pope Leo XIV in Ch. XV
Lazarus (1990)