Quotes about Insight

Wisdom is knowing when you can't be wise.

To write or read a poem is . . . to enter into a different kind of thought world from our normal patterns. A poem is not merely ordinary thought with a few turns and twiddles added on to make it pretty or memorable. A poem (a good poem, at least) uses its poetic form to probe deeper into human experience than ordinary speech or writing is usually able to do, to pull back a veil and allow the hearer or reader to sense other dimensions.

History is always a matter of trying to think into the minds of people who think differently from ourselves.

The radical insight of St. Paul into what it means to be human, and what it means to have the overwhelming love of God take hold of you, corresponds in quite an obvious way to what most people know about what makes someone more or less livable-with. And livable-with-ness, though of course it contains a large subjective element, is not a bad rule of thumb for what it might mean to be truly human.

A major part of our inquiry, then, must be to look at the emerging Christian movement and to ask: what caused it? Even if our eyewitnesses disagree in detail, something must have happened.

on. And then we catch a glimpse—or was

No, insists Paul, once you learn the meaning of the gospel, you have to see everything inside out.

Frank Sheed once said, "The secular novelist sees what is visible; the Christian novelist sees what is there.

Artists are often the barometers of society.

to truly lead one's people one must also truly know them.

Some people have a sense of unearthly things, just as others have an excellent sense of smell or hearing or taste. They can feel the subtle shifts in the great and complicated body of the world. And some of these have so honed that inner sight that they can even tell where a holy spark has fallen, notice its glow in the very place you would least expect it. The worse the place, the more fervently the spark gleams, flickers— and the warmer and purer is its light.

On a Wednesday in January, at seven in the morning, it's plain to see that the world was not made for Man, and definitely not for his comfort or pleasure.