Video Meliora, proboque; Deteriora sequor

Weekend Quotables

Later, in defense of Herman Melville's passion for minutiae, spread out over hundreds and hundreds of pages, [E.L.] Doctorow concludes: "It is indisputable in my mind that excess in literature is its own justification." - Sunday's Columbus Dispatch
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"The contemporary reader would do well to read the King James side by side with the Revised Standard. Some lovingly stereophonic truths come of the fact that a devotion to God did not preclude the use of narrative strategies." - E.L. Doctorow regarding the book of Genesis
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Perhaps there is a sense in which each and every saint, even those who were scholars, would be regarded as insane by many in the modern world because of their devotion to a way of life that was completely senseless apart from the Gospel. Every saint is troubling. Every saint reveals some of our fears and makes us question our fear-driven choices. - Jim Forest
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Two kinds of memoirs are worth reading: those whose authors have led such long and fascinating lives that the prose almost doesn't matter, and those in which the writing is so insightful or gorgeous that the events described are almost irrelevant. Jonathon Franzen's strange little collection of autobiographical essays doesn't fall into either category. - Columbus Dispatch book review
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St. Francis saw the glory of God in the birds and the streams and the stars, in all the creatures of our God and king. He was not imagining it; he was no jaded primitivist! He was in love with God and longed more than anything to praise him aright...When we praise God, we surely render unto him what he does not need. But for precisely the above all do we praise him, that he does not and cannot need our praise. - Anthony Esolen in Touchstone
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When all else is lost and gone forever, there is yearning. One of the few welcome lessons age teaches is that only desire trumps time. - from Cold Mountain author Charles Fraizer's latest novel