It wasn__ that she necessarily wanted to __ocialize_ at the bonfire, but she wanted to broadcast to the general population that her antisocial behavior was a personal choice not a sentence to social leprosy.

It required all his delicate Epicurean education to prevent his doing something about it; he had to repeat over to himself his favorite notions: that the injustice and unhappiness in the world is a constant; that the theory of progress is a delusion; that the poor, never having known happiness, are insensible to misfortune. Like all the rich he could not bring himself to believe that the poor (look at their houses, look at their clothes) could really suffer. Like all the cultivated he believed that only the widely read could be said to know that they were unhappy.

The devil is not the prince of matter; the devil is the arrogance of spirit, faith without smile, truth that is never seized by doubt. The devil is grim because he knows where he is going, and, in moving, he always returns from whence he came.

History warns us ... that it is the customary fate of new truths to begin as heresies and to end as superstitions.

But why, everybody asks, am I not blessed by fortune (or at least not as blessed as I would like to be)? Why have I not been favored like others who are less deserving? No one believes their misfortunes are attributable to any shortcomings of their own; that is why they must find a culprit.

People who say we are just preaching "extreme grace" must not understand how extremely gracious our Father is.