“I used to look at homeless peopleand try to imagine what they had once looked like. It's not easy. Beneath the grime and degradation is a face once adored by someone. It's a truth that tricks the eye; our glances slide away. But something happened to ruin that life, to strip it bare; and it was something small, something that but for the grace of God could take us, too.”
Source: The King of Lies (2006), Ch. 2.
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John Hart 8
American author with multiple books and awards 1965Related quotes
"Perfect Knowledge in Final Things" (p. 108)
Private Lives in the Imperial City (1979)

Interview in Salon magazine ( 2 February 1998) http://web.archive.org/web/20000301183409/http://www.salon.com/books/int/1998/02/cov_si_02int.html
Source: Leisure, the Basis of Culture (1948), Leisure, the Basis of Culture, p. 9
The Ernst Jünger quote is from Blätter und Steine (Hamburg, 1934), p. 202.
Prayer and the Art of Volkswagen Maintenance (2000, Harvest House Publishers)
Source: Lady of Mazes (2005), Chapter 24 (p. 265).

“What was that whiteness?
Truth? A pebble of quartz? For once, then, something.”
For Once, Then, Something (1923)
Context: Others taunt me with having knelt at well-curbs
Always wrong to the light, so never seeing
Deeper down in the well than where the water
Gives me back in [[w:Narcissus (mythology)|a shining surface picture
My myself]] in the summer heaven, godlike
Looking out of a wreath of fern and cloud puffs.
Once, when trying with chin against a well-curb,
I discerned, as I thought, beyond the picture,
Through the picture, a something white, uncertain,
Something more of the depths – and then I lost it.
Water came to rebuke the too clear water.
One drop fell from a fern, and lo, a ripple
Shook whatever it was lay there at bottom,
Blurred it, blotted it out. What was that whiteness?
Truth? A pebble of quartz? For once, then, something.