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"Perhaps grief, which destroys all patterns, destroys even more: the belief that any patterns exist. But we cannot, I think, survive without such belief. So each of us must pretend to find, or re-erect, a pattern."
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"War is only one facet of the larger problem of evil which has been with the human race since the beginning . . .This same evil tried to destroy the greatest human being who ever lived, nailing Him to a cross."

"Heaven is a wonderful place and the benefits for the believer are out of this world!"

"God does not want an apartment in our house. He claims our entire home from attic to cellar."

"Thought, if I may put it, is the man behind the possession, appearance, things we like, things we hate and the very epitome of life."

"We should not covet or expect the praise of ungodly men . . . the very fact that they are inclined to persecute us is proof that we are “not of the world."

"A philosopher once asked, "Are we human because we gaze at the stars, or do we gaze at them because we are human?" Pointless, really..."Do the stars gaze back?" Now, that's a question."

"Heavenly rest will be so refreshing that we will never feel that exhaustion of mind and body we so frequently experience now. I'm really looking forward to that."

"It is what it is because you let it be so."

"I am the creation of love.I am the source of love.I am the beginning of love.I like to vanish in love."

"I believe there is an obedience to the Gospel, there is a self-denial and a bearing of the cross, if you are to be a follower of Christ. Being a Christian is a serious business."
Explore more quotes by Julian Barnes

"How weird it would be to have around you only as many books as you have time to read in the rest of your life. And I remain deeply attached to the physical book and the physical bookshop."

"How do we seize the past? Can we ever do so? When I was a medical student some pranksters at the end-of-the-term dance released into the hall a piglet which had been smeared with grease. It squirmed between legs, evaded capture, squealed a lot. People fell over trying to grasp it, and were made to look ridiculous in the process. The past often seems to behave like that piglet."

"Back then, things were plainer: less money, no electronic devices, little fashion tyranny, no girlfriends. There was nothing to distract us from our human and filial duty which was to study, pass exams, use those qualifications to find a job, and then put together a way of life unthreateningly fuller than that of our parents, who would approve, while privately comparing it to their own earlier lives, which had been simpler, and therefore superior."

"Time...give us enough time and our best-supported decisions will seem wobbly, our certainties whimsical."

"Love may not lead where we think or hope, but regardless of outcome it should be a call to seriousness and truth. If it is not that - if it is not moral in its effect - then love is no more than an exaggerated form of pleasure."

"Was it the case that colours dimmed as the eye grew elderly? Or was it rather that in youth your excitement about the world transferred itself onto everything you saw and made it brighter?"

"Life versus Death becomes, as Montaigne pointed out, Old Age versus Death."

"Is there anything more plausible than a second hand?"
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