I'm just a tool, I'm just a big, hard tool.
Christianity is not a mere set of opinions to be embraced by understanding. It is the work of the heart as well as the head.
Poetry has been to me something more than amusement, it has been a cheering companion when I had no other to fly to, a delightful solace.
To wind the mighty secrets of the past, And turn the key of time.
The past is dead, and has no resurrection.
So, on the eastern summit, clad in gray, morn, like a horseman girt for travel, comes, and from his tower of mist night's watchman hurries down.
I do not like punishments. You will never torture a child into duty; but a sensible child will dread the frown of a judicious mother more than all the rods, dark rooms, end scolding school-mistresses in the universe.
If anyone dared to assert that the Pontiff had erred in this or that canonisation, we shall say that he is, if not a heretic, at least temerarious, a giver of scandal to the whole Church, an insulter of the saints, a favourer of those heretics who deny the Church's authority in canonizing saints, savouring of heresy by giving unbelievers an occasion to mock the faithful, the assertor of an erroneous opinion and liable to very grave penalties.
So I didn't adopt Homer because he was cute and little and sweet, or because he was helpless and needed me. I adopted him because when you think you see something so fundamentally worthwhile in someone else, you don't look for the reasons - like bad timing or a negative bank balance - that might keep it out of your life. You commit to being strong enough to build your life around it, no matter what. In doing so, you begin to become the thing you admire.
Actually, when I look at my old notebooks, I think I have been a bit self-indulgent and have given myself too much time to meander in my discursive thoughts. I could have cut through sooner. Yet it is good to know about our terrible selves, not laud or criticize them, just acknowledge them. Then, out of this knowledge, we are better equipped to make a choice for beauty, kind consideration and clear truth. We make this choice with our feet firmly on the ground. We are not running wildly after beauty with fear at our backs.
There's a loss of faith in the banking system that for so long has been the backbone of prosperity and growth.