“Either ghosts are a metaphor for history, or history is a metaphor for ghosts.”
Source: Kilroy Was Here (1996), p. 133
Structure, Sign and Play
Writing and Difference (1978)
“Either ghosts are a metaphor for history, or history is a metaphor for ghosts.”
Source: Kilroy Was Here (1996), p. 133
Meditations on the Sacraments (1977), Introduction, p. xi.
Context: Grace is everywhere as an active orientation of all created reality toward God, though God does not owe it to any creature to give it this special orientation. Grace does not happen in isolated instances here and there in an otherwise profane and graceless world. It is legitimate, of course, to speak of grace-events which occur at discrete points in space and time. But then what we are really talking about is the existential and historical acceptance of this grace by human freedom. … Grace itself … is everywhere and always, even though a human being's freedom can sinfully say no to it, just as a human being's freedoms can protest against humankind itself. This immanence of grace in the conscious world always and everywhere does not take away the gratuity of grace, because God's immediacy out of self-giving love is not something anyone can claim as his or her due. The immanence of grace always and everywhere does not make salvation history cease to be history, because history is the acceptance of grace by the historical freedom of human beings and the history of spirit coming ever more to itself in grace.
“Universal history is the history of a few metaphors.”
"Pascal’s Sphere" ["La esfera de Pascal"] (1951)
Variant translations: Perhaps universal history is the history of the diverse intonation of some metaphors.
It may be that universal history is the history of the different intonations given a handful of metaphors.
Other Inquisitions (1952)
“Dracula is a metaphor for the evil that is so hard to undo in history.”
As quoted in "Raising the Undead" by Jessica Treadway, Chicago Tribune (12 June 2005)
Game of thrones with world chess champion Viswanathan Anand
Source: An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land (1973), p. 47