Do not thou, O Lord, withhold thy mercy from me,
let thy steadfast love and thy faithfulness ever preserve me!
For evils have encompassed me without number;
My iniquities have overtaken me, till I cannot see;
they are more than the hairs of my head;
my heart fails me.
Be pleased, O Lord, to deliver me!
O Lord, make haste to help me!

- Psalm 40:11-13

There never was much hope. Just a fool's hope, as I have been told.

- Gandalf, in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

Trust the human heart: it is blind and blundering, but I fancy it is the best thing in stock. It flies straighter than our logic: to the last it is a reality. We cannot guide it: trust it. ... Let a woman leave her father and mother ... and take her chance like the rest of us. ... I feel if you keep love in you somehow, it will keep a kind of furnished apartments for you in the blackest lonely existence.

- Basil Howe, in Basil Howe, by G. K. Chesterton

The LORD himself will fight for you; you have only to keep still.

-Moses, in Exodus 14:14

Hope consists in asserting that there is at the heart of being, beyond all data, beyond all inventories and all calculations, a mysterious principle which is in connivance with me, which cannot but will that which I will, if what I will deserves to be willed and is, in fact, willed by the whole of my being.

- Gabriel Marcel, "On the Ontological Mystery," in The Philosophy of Existentialism

Philosophy always buries its undertakers.

- Etienne Gilson, in The Unity of Philosophical Experience

I meant what I said, and I said what I meant.
An elephant's faithful, one hundred percent.

- Horton, in Horton Hatches the Egg by Dr. Seuss

The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved--loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.
- Victor Hugo

The curse of our modern man of the worldism is that we court the women we disapprove and despise the women we respect: we talk of a good woman lightly, like an old household chattel, and forget that her price is above rubies. We are not lowest on our knees before the pure and tender woman, but before two eyes and half a dozen diamonds. I am sick of all this fin de siecle sniggering over wit and culture and the rest of it. Did wit bring us into the world? Did culture bear pain that we might live? Did they love us in our silly fractious childhood and have no thought on earth but us? Can they comfort us, or kindle or sustain? Do we go to an authoress when we are wretched, or think of a woman of fashion when we are tempted? No, indeed, ... but a woman that feareth the Lord she shall be praised: give her the portion that is due to her, and let her works praise her in the gates!

- Valentin, in Basil Howe by G.K. Chesterton

Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.

- I Corinthians 13:4-8

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, in "On Three Ways of Writing for Children"

In the tender compassion of our God
the dawn from on high shall break upon us,
to shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death,
and to guide our feet into the way of peace.

- Luke 1:78-79

Every lay Christian is an extraordinary work of God's grace and is called to the heights of holiness. Sometimes, lay men and women do not seem to appreciate to the full the dignity and the vocation that is theirs as lay people. It is their specific vocation and mission to express the Gospel in their lives and thereby to insert the Gospel as a leaven into the reality of the world in which they live and work.

- Pope John Paul II, in homily in Limerick, Ireland on October 1, 1979

They're sharing a drink they call loneliness, but it's better than drinking alone.

- Billy Joel, in "Piano Man"

It's God's nature to come on in the bottom of the ninth ... Especially when the bases are loaded and there's only one out.

- Tom Gordon, in The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon by Stephen King

What we do in life echoes in eternity.

- Maximus, in Gladiator

I want to believe.

- Fox Mulder, in The X-Files

Comfort, comfort my people, says your God.
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
and cry to her
that her warfare is ended,
that her iniquity is pardoned,
that she has received from the Lord's hand
double for all her sins.

- Isaiah 40:1-2

To be capable of steady friendship or lasting love, are the two greatest proofs, not only of goodness of heart, but of strength of mind.

- William Hazlitt

The world is full of guys. Be a man. Don't be a guy.

- Corey Flood, in Say Anything

So this is how liberty dies--with thunderous applause.

- Senator Padme Amidala, in Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith

Believe me, you never know the best about men till you know the worst about them. ... only God knows how good they have tried to be. God alone knows what the conscience can survive, or how a man who has lost his honour will still try to save his soul.

- Horne Fisher, in The Man Who Knew Too Much by G.K. Chesterton

There are times when I would like to talk to God and say "Lord, you obviously have a plan for me to do, would you share with me the wisdom of your agenda?"

- Bishop Wilton Gregory

All men die. Not all men truly live.

- William Wallace, in Braveheart

Knowing sorrow well, I learn to succor the distressed.

- Dido, in The Aeneid by Virgil

So far as a man may be proud of a religion rooted in humility, I am very proud of my religion; I am especially proud of those parts of it that are most commonly called superstition. I am proud of being fettered by antiquated dogmas and enslaved by dead creeds ... . I am very proud of what people call Mariolatry; because it introduced into religion in the darkest ages that element of chivalry which is now being belatedly and badly understood in the form of feminism. I am very proud of being orthodox about the mysteries of the Trinity or the Mass; I am proud of believing in the Confessional; I am proud of believing in the Papacy.

- G.K. Chesterton, in Autobiography

The lover knows much more about absolute good and universal beauty than any logician or theologian, unless the latter, too, be lovers in disguise.

- George Santayana, in The Life of Reason: Reason in Society

Love is a binding force.

- Saint Thomas Aquinas, in the Summa Theologiae, I, q. 20, a. 1, ad 3

Well, there can't be any harm in staring up at the window, though the sagacity of it might be questioned. After that I will take up my bed and walk ... and, Oh Lord, what a walk up hill it will be.

- Basil Howe, in Basil Howe by G.K. Chesterton