#ra

The hard core of morality and even of religion seems to me to be just what makes good comedy possible...Where there is no norm, nothing can be ridiculous, except for a brief moment of unbalanced provincialism in which we may laugh at the merely unfamiliar. Unless there is something about which the author is never ironical, there can be no true irony in the work. ↗

— C.S. Lewis

#humor #irony #morality #principles #writing

Praise be to God, Who has so disposed matters that pleasant literary anecdotes may serve as an instrument for the polishing of wits and the cleansing of rust from our hearts. ↗

— Ahmad Al-Tifashi

#literature #religion #religion

Here lies one from a distant star, but the soil is not alien to him, for in death he belongs to the universe. ↗

— Clifford D. Simak

#death #gravestone #science #science-fiction #stars

Accumulating orthodoxy makes it harder year-by-year to be a Christian than it was in Jesus' day. ↗

— Brian D. McLaren

#orthodoxy #religion #tradition #religion

Error is indeed our enemy, but it alone points to the truth and therefore deserves our respectful treatment. ↗

— Allan Bloom

#truth #respect

Theology being the work of males, original sin was traced to the female. ↗

— Barbara W. Tuchman

#barbara-tuchman #catholic-church #christianity #religion #religion

You can see the same immorality or amorality in the Christian view of guilt and punishment. There are only two texts, both of them extreme and mutually contradictory. The Old Testament injunction is the one to exact an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth (it occurs in a passage of perfectly demented detail about the exact rules governing mutual ox-goring; you should look it up in its context (Exodus 21). The second is from the Gospels and says that only those without sin should cast the first stone. The first is a moral basis for capital punishment and other barbarities; the second is so relativistic and "nonjudgmental" that it would not allow the prosecution of Charles Manson. Our few notions of justice have had to evolve despite these absurd codes of ultra vindictiveness and ultracompassion. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#christianity #compassion #guilt #immorality #justice

The hands that help are better far than lips that pray. ↗

— Robert Green Ingersoll

#atheism #pragmatism #proactive #responsibility #true-religion

En un mundo donde el horror se vende como arte, donde el arte nace ya con la pretensión de ser fotografiado, donde convivir con las imágenes del sufrimiento no tiene relación con la conciencia ni con la compasión, las fotos de guerra no sirven para nada. ↗

— Arturo Pérez-Reverte

#art

My love has made me selfish. I cannot exist without you – I am forgetful of every thing but seeing you again – my Life seems to stop there – I see no further. You have absorb'd me. I have a sensation at the present moment as though I was dissolving – I should be exquisitely miserable without the hope of soon seeing you ... I have been astonished that Men could die Martyrs for religion – I have shudder'd at it – I shudder no more – I could be martyr'd for my Religion – Love is my religion – I could die for that – I could die for you. ↗

— John Keats

#john-keats #love #poetry #romance #life