Wise quotes from a Facebook friend:

"The point of an open mind, like having an open mouth, is to close it on something solid." - G.K. Chesterton

"If they won't write the kind of books we want to read, we shall have to write them ourselves; but it is very laborious." - C.S. Lewis to J.R.R. Tolkien

"And like all true believers, I am truly skeptical of all that I have said." - Over the Rhine, "The World Can Wait"

"The truth must dazzle gradually." - Emily Dickinson

"How can people think that artists seek a name? A name, like a face, is something you have when you're not alone. There is no such thing as an artist: there is only the world, lit or unlit as the light allows. When the candle is burning, who looks at the wick? When the candle is out, who needs it? But the world without light is wasteland and chaos, and a life without sacrifice is abomination.

What can any artist set on fire but his world? What can any people bring to the altar but all it has ever owned in the the thin towns or over the desolate plains? What can an artist use but materials, such as they are? What can he light but the short string of his gut, and when that's burnt out, any muck ready to hand?

His face is flame like a seraph's, lighting the kingdom of God for the people to see; his life goes up in the works; his feet are waxen and salt. He is holy and he is firm, spanning the long gap with the length of his love, in flawed imitation of Christ on the cross stretched both ways unbroken and thorned. So must the work be also, in touch with, in touch with, in touch with; spanning the gap, from here to eternity, home." - Annie Dillard, "Holy the Firm"

“If I discover within myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.” - C.S. Lewis

"When I became a man, I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up." - C.S. Lewis

"When we understand the outside of things, we think we have them. Yet the Lord puts his things in subdefined, suggestive shapes, yielding no satisfactory meaning to the mere intellect, but unfolding themselves to the conscience and heart." - George Macdonald

"“I want to give the audience a hint of a scene. No more than that. Give them too much and they won’t contribute anything themselves. Give them just a suggestion and you get them working with you. That’s what gives the theater meaning: when it becomes a social act.” - Orson Welles

"If you write for God, you will reach many men and bring them joy. If you write for men, you may make some money, and you may give someone a little joy, and you may make a noise in the world — for a little while. If you write only for yourself, you can read what you yourself have written, and after ten minutes, you will be so disgusted you will wish that you were dead." - Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation