1 peter on Oxymoron

Less is more. Coined by Robert Browning and popularized by the German-born American architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, nothing could be further from the literal truth. But when people use this exp...

Sweet are the uses of adversity, Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, Wears yet a precious jewel in his head.

There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest...

One of the great ironies of sin is that when human beings try to become more than human beings, to be as gods, they fall to become lower than human beings. To be your own God and live for your own glo...

He, the Life of all, our Lord and Saviour, did not arrange the manner of his own death lest He should seem to be afraid of some other kind. No. He accepted and bore upon the cross a death inflicted by...

Love is an agreement on the part of two people to overestimate each other.

But what will not Ambition and Revenge Descend to? Who aspires must down as low As high he sor’d, obnoxious first or last To basest things.

Our bond, which you resent, consists in mutual love, for we know not how to hate; we call ourselves ‘brethren’ to which you object, as members of one family in God, as partners in one faith, as joint ...

Poetry too is a little incarnation, giving body to what had been before invisible and inaudible.

While movies and novels often present stories of a budding love interest willing to give up everything for “true love” (Romeo and Juliet, for example), the renowned poet, and later clergyman, John Don...

Al Capone, the most notorious gangster in American History, had these three words etched on his tombstone: “My Jesus Mercy”

The mind in all its intricate beauty can be a place of great anguish. Thoughts can both grip us for the good and plague us for that which is not. In Dickens’ Christmas novella, The Chimes, he describe...

Your torture puts hostility to death Your broken body breaks down every dividing wall Your blood makes us blood What wondrous truth What dazzling grace Bring us near again, Jesus Help us remember an...

If you were to travel back in time to the city of Rome (either during the Republic or the Empire), you may have had the opportunity to witness the Triumph, a colossal spectacle in which the greatest m...

The way up is to go down; the way down is to go up.

Hope is the physician of each misery.

Wherever you find the Lord’s might, you find his humility.

See the leaves around us falling, Dry and withered to the ground; Thus to thoughtless mortals calling, In a sad and solemn sound "Youth on length of days presuming, Who the paths of pleasure tre...

On a little study table in my office, there’s a card with a quote from Victor Hugo’s epic novel Les Misérables: My coat and I live comfortably together. It has assumed all my wrinkles, does not hurt...

Every cross adorning a church is in itself a sermon—a sermon proclaiming that if Christ can transform the Roman instrument of execution into a thing of beauty, there is hope that in Christ all things ...

“So to end this time together, I won’t say everything will be okay. How could I know that? I’ll just look you in the eye, give you a nod of solidarity, and smile. There, peeping among the cloud-wrack ...

Let us drink to the success of our hopeless cause.

Forgiving the unforgivable is hard. So was the cross: hard words, hard wood, hard nails.

O Splendor of God’s glory bright. From Light eternal bringing light, O Light of life, the living Spring, True Day, all days illumining. Dawn’s glory gilds the earth and skies; Let him, our perfect...

Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul.

Pride juggles with her toppling towers, They strike the sun and cease, But the firm feet of humility They grip the ground like trees.

[God’s] greatest grace is found at the lowest place

There is one spectacle grander than the sea, that is the sky; there is one spectacle grander than the sky, that is the interior of the soul.

Glory be to God for dappled things.

[Beauty] “is goodness made manifest to the senses.