Quotes 2 Mar 18

For a nun's life of course is utterly sexual....Of course, she omits as an offering to God, one particular expression of her sexuality; but it is only one out of a hundred. The sexual congress she does not attend is not life's most important meeting, all the marriage manuals to the contrary notwithstanding. - Robert Farrar Capon, Bed and Board, p 49

Very soon the end of your life will be at hand: consider, 

therefore, the state of your soul.  Today a man is here; 

tomorrow he is gone. . . . 

You should order your every deed and thought, as though today 

were the day of your death.  Had you a good conscience, death 

would hold no terrors for you. --Thomas A' Kempis (1380-1471) 

      _The Imitation Of Christ_ [c. 1420]; Book 1, Chapter 23 

Just as the soil needs cultivators of the soil, the mind needs teachers. But teachers are not as easy to come by as farmers. The teachers themselves are pupils and must be pupils. But there cannot be an infinite regress: ultimately there must be teachers who are not in turn pupils. Those teachers who are not in turn pupils are the great minds or, in order to avoid any ambiguity in a matter of such importance, the greatest minds. Such men are extremely rare. We are not likely to meet any of them in any classroom. We are not likely to meet any of them anywhere. It is a piece of good luck if there is a single one alive in one's time. For all practical purposes, pupils, of whatever degree of proficiency, have access to the teachers who are not in turn pupils, to the greatest minds, only through the great books. Liberal education will then consist in studying with the proper care the great books which the greatest minds have left behind -- a study in which the more experienced pupils assist the less experienced pupils, including the beginners. 

-- Leo Strauss, graduation speech at University of Chicago, June 6, 1959, 

When you have arrived at that state when trouble 

seems sweet and acceptable to you for Christ's 

sake, then all is well with you, for you have found 

paradise upon earth. 

But so long as suffering is grievous to you and 

you seek to escape it, so long will it go ill with 

you, for the trouble you try to escape will 

pursue you everywhere. --Thomas A' Kempis (1380-1471) 

      _The Imitation Of Christ_ [c. 1420]; Book 2, Chapter 12 

Everyone can master a grief but he that has it. 

     --William Shakespeare (1564-1616) 

      _Much Ado About Nothing_ [1598-1600]; 

       Act III, Scene II, Line 26 

       http://www.shakespeare-online.com/plays/much_3_2.html