‘I wonder sometimes if the teacher is not the real student and beneficiary’ (George Steiner)
They had been brought up in a tradition that told them in one way or another that the life of the mind and the life of the senses were separate and, indeed, inimical; they had believed, without ever having really thought about it, that one had to be chosen at some expense of the other. That the one could intensify the other had never occurred to them …
From Stoner by John Williams
Very sad – and, one suspects, all too often so very true.
And another quote by Pope Francis, again as quoted in Paul Vallely, Pope Francis: Untying the Knots:
Let us never forget that authentic power is service.
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Nobody who has opened up new paths leaves without scars on his body.
Pope Francis, as quoted in Paul Vallely, Pope Francis: Untying the Knots
A war doesn’t merely kill off a few thousand or a few hundred thousand young men. It kills off something in a people that can never be brought back. And if a people goes through enough wars, pretty soon all that’s left is the brute, the creature that we – you and I and others like us – have brought up from the slime.
John Williams, Stoner
Dialogue is born from a respectful attitude toward the other person, from a conviction that the other person has something good to say. It supposes that we can make room in our heart for their point of view, their opinion and their proposals. Dialogue entails a warm reception and not a pre-emptive condemnation. To dialogue, one must know how to lower the defences, to open the doors of one’s home and to offer warmth.
Jorge Mario Bergoglio, now also known as Pope Francis, as quoted in Paul Vallely, Pope Francis: Untying the Knots
When I fed the poor, they called me a saint.
When I asked why they were poor, they called me a Communist.
Dom Helder Camara
Karl Möller 