“Thomas — Jefferson — still surv”

“Had it not been for Thomas Paine I could not deliver this lecture here to-night.
It is still fashionable to calumniate this man — and yet Channing, Theodore Parker, Longfellow, Emerson, and in fact all the liberal Unitarians and Universalists of the world have adopted the opinions of Thomas Paine.”

“I just heard what was said, it isn't strictly accurate by any means, I'm a man who's just been lucky on having wonderful partners, Schoedsack alot more than I did on Grass and Chang, and right down the line I've only had John Ford as a partner, Thomas is a great friend on technicolor, and for cinerama, Fred Waller invented it, Thomas picked up the ball and ran with it, and there's a young man in this audience, Bob Bendick, that most of you have never heard, that did far more of the production then I did. I want to thank all the great partners I've had in my life, thank you. I just want to add I'm still John Ford's partner.”

“Strange as it sounds, although Man thought himself hardly treated in respect to freedom, yet, if freedom meant superiority, Man was in action much the superior of God, whose freedom suffered, from Saint Thomas, under restraints that Man never would have tolerated. Saint Thomas did not allow God even an undetermined will; he was pure Act, and as such he could not change. Man alone was, in act, allowed to change direction. What was more curious still, Man might absolutely prove his freedom by refusing to move at all; if he did not like his life, he could stop it, and habitually did so, or acquiesced in its being done for him; while God could not commit suicide or even cease for a single instant his continuous action. If Man had the singular fancy of making himself absurd,— a taste confined to himself but attested by evidence exceedingly strong,— he could be as absurd as he liked; but God could not be absurd. Saint Thomas did not allow the Deity the right to contradict himself, which is one of Man's chief pleasures. While Man enjoyed what was, for his purposes, an unlimited freedom to be wicked,— a privilege which, as both Church and State bitterlly complained and still complain, he has outrageously abused,— God was Goodness and could be nothing else. […] In one respect, at least, Man's freedom seemed to be not relative but absolute, for his thought was an energy paying no regard to space or time or order or object or sense; but God's thought was his act and will at once; speaking correctly, God could not think, he is. Saint Thomas would not, or could not, admit that God was Necessity, as Abélard seems to have held, but he refused to tolerate the idea of a divine maniac, free from moral obligation to himself. The atmosphere of Saint Louis surrounds the God of Saint Thomas, and its pure ether shuts out the corruption and pollution to come,— the Valois and Bourbons, the Occams and Hobbes's, the Tudors and the Medicis of an enlightened Europe.”

“The stillness in stillness is not the real stillness; only when there is stillness in movement does the universal rhythm manifest.”

“Look, still is the sea and still are the breezes; but the pain in my heart is not still.”

“Then everything was still. Absolutely still.”

“Dream after dream ensues;
And still they dream that they shall still succeed;
And still are disappointed.”

“If it's still in your mind, it is still in your heart.”

“Still paying, still to owe.
Eternal woe!”