Grace Is Gratuitous; It Is A Gift.

Believing Ourselves To Be Possessors Of Absolute Truth Degrades Us: We Regard Every Person Whose Way Of Thinking Is Different From Ours As A Monster And A Threat And By So Doing Turn Our Own Selves Into Monsters And Threats To Our Fellows.

Solitude Is The Profoundest Fact

The Whole Motley Confusion Of Acts, Omissions, Regrets And Hopes Which Is The Life Of Each One Of Us Finds In Death, Not Meaning Or Explanation, But An End.

The North American System Only Wants To Consider The Positive Aspects Of Reality. Men And Women Are Subjected From Childhood To An Inexorable Process Of Adaptation Certain Principles, Contained In Brief Formulas Are Endlessly Repeated By The Press, The Radio, The Churches, And The Schools, And By Those Kindly, Sinister Beings, The North American Mothers And Wives. A Person Imprisoned By These Schemes Is Like A Plant In A Flowerpot Too Small For It He Cannot Grow Or Mature.

The Religion Of Art, Like The Religion Of Politics, Was Born From The Ruins Of Christianity. Art Inherited From The Old Religion The Power Of Consecrating Things And Endowing Them With A Sort Of Eternity; Museums Are Our Temples, And The Objects Displayed In Them Are Beyond History. Politics--or More Precisely, Revolution--co-opted The Other Function Of Religion: Changing Human Beings And Society. Art Was An Asceticism, A Spiritual Heroism; Revolution Was The Construction Of A Universal Church.