Poignant
"'From my reading, Michelangelo, I have been able to follow the rise, fulfillment, decay and disappearance of many religions. That is what is happening to our religion today. Christianity has had fifteen hundred years to prove itself, and has ended in ... what? Borgia murders, greed, incest, perversion of every tenet of our faith. Rome is more evil today than Sodom and Gomorrah when they were destroyed by fire.'
'Even as Savonarola has said?'
'As Savonarola has said. A hundred years of Borgias and there will be nothing left here but a historic pile of stones'"
-- Irving Stone, The Agony and the Ecstasy
Well, I hate to be accused of optimism, but one good quote deserves another.
ReplyDeleteFrom Cardinal Newman:
"Spring passes into summer and through autumn into winter. Only the more surely, by its more ultimate return, to triumph over that grave toward which its resolutely hastens from its first hour. We mourn over the blossoms of May because they are to whither. But we know withal that May is one day to have its revenge upon November, by the revelation of that solemn circle that never stops. Which teaches us in our height of hopes ever to be sober. And in our depths of desolation never to despair."