Speaking in elegy regarding the recent death of Michael Collins. From " Poblacht na-Eireann (War News ) No. 47 " Thursday 24 August 1922.
Literary Years and War (1900-1918), Last Years: Ireland (1919-1922)
Sermon at Hackney Unitarian Church, London, on 24th April 1870.
“Remember that yours is not the only heart that may be wishing for love.”
Source: Before Midnight: A Retelling of Cinderella
“We can open our hearts to God, but only with Divine help.”
Quaestiones de veritate disputatae q 24, art. 15, ad 2
“An envious heart makes a treacherous ear.”
“Where can we go to find God if we cannot see Him in our own hearts and in every living being?”
Pearls of Wisdom
Source: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848), Ch. IX : A Snake in the Grass; Eliza to Gilbert
The Voluntaryist Creed
Context: There is one and only one principle, on which you can build a true, rightful, enduring and progressive civilization, which can give peace and friendliness and contentment to all differing groups and sects into which we are divided—and that principle is that every man and woman should be held by us all sacredly and religiously to be the one true owner of his or her faculties, of his or her body and mind, and of all property, inherited or — honestly acquired. There is no other possible foundation — seek it wherever you will — on which you can build, if you honestly mean to make this world a place of peace and friendship, where progress of every kind, like a full river fed by its many streams, may flow on its happy fertilizing course, with ever broadening and deepening volume. Deny that self-ownership, that self-guidance of the individual, and however fine our professed motives may be, we must sooner or later, in a world without rights, become like animals who prey on each other. Deny human rights, and however little you may wish to do so, you will find yourself abjectly kneeling at the feet of that old-world god, Force — that grimmest and ugliest of gods that men have ever carved for themselves out of the lusts of their hearts; you will find yourselves hating and dreading all other men who differ from you; you will find yourselves obliged by the law of conflict into which you have plunged, to use every means in your power to crush them before they are able to crush you; you will find yourselves day by day growing more unscrupulous and intolerant, more and more compelled by the fear of those opposed to you, to commit harsh and violent actions, of which you would once have said 'Is thy servant a dog taht he should do these things?'; you will find yourselves clinging to and welcoming Force, as the one and only form of protection left to you, when you have destroyed the rule of the great principles.
Source: The Task (1785), Book VI, Winter Walk at Noon, Line 439.
2015, Eulogy for the Honorable Reverend Clementa Pinckney (June 2015)
Context: As a nation, out of this terrible tragedy, God has visited grace upon us, for he has allowed us to see where we’ve been blind. He has given us the chance, where we’ve been lost, to find our best selves. We may not have earned it, this grace, with our rancor and complacency, and short-sightedness and fear of each other -- but we got it all the same. He gave it to us anyway. He’s once more given us grace. But it is up to us now to make the most of it, to receive it with gratitude, and to prove ourselves worthy of this gift.
"Social Justice and the Emerging New Age" address at the Herman W. Read Fieldhouse, Western Michigan University (18 December 1963)
1960s
