Dowling Bartholomew Quotes

“A cup to the dead already - Hurrah for the next that dies.”

“If you do not ask yourself what it is you know you will go on listening to others and change will not come because you will not hear your own truth.”

“Once you begin to believe there is help "out there " you will know it to be true.”

“Spend time every day listening to what your muse is trying to tell you.”

“Archbishop Mannix was possessed of the clearest intellect I have ever encountered. He prayed regularly for five hours and more each day, this in the midst of a life of intense activity. When he was well over ninety, I once asked him about the precise quality of the Faith which had sustained him. His answer? 'My Faith has always been like a thin silken thread, fraying perpetually at the brink of a precipice over which I hang. Yet the thread has never snapped.”

“He wanted a faery. More than anything else in the world. He had already imagined exactly how it should happen. He would set up the invitation, and the next day there would be a petal-winged pisky clinging to the top of his bedpost. It would have a foolish grin on its face, and large ears, and it wouldn’t notice at all that Bartholomew was small and ugly and different from everyone else. But no. Mother had to ruin everything.”

“It’s sarcasm, Josh.”“Sarcasm?”“It’s from the Greek, sarkasmos. To bite the lips. It means that you aren’t really saying what you mean, but people will get your point. I invented it, Bartholomew named it.”“Well, if the village idiot named it, I’m sure it’s a good thing.”“There you go, you got it.”“Got what?”“Sarcasm.”“No, I meant it.”“Sure you did.”“Is that sarcasm?”“Irony, I think.”“What’s the difference?”“I haven’t the slightest idea.”“So you’re being ironic now, right?”“No, I really don’t know.”“Maybe you should ask the idiot.”“Now you’ve got it.”“What?”“Sarcasm.”

“It's strange, isn't it, how you never know you're living the best time of your life at the moment you're living it? If you could appreciate, at that instant, that this is it, maybe you'd make certain your mind imprinted every detail of the sights, smells, sounds and sensations. Then again, maybe knowing that life will only get duller, sadder, less hopeful afterward would inject melancholy into that moment. You'd miss life's peak experience by mourning it before it passes. So perhaps it's best not to know.”

“The Sabbath day of rest establishes the reality that God's people live by God's grace and not by their own labors.”

“Gertrude, behind her, again had just one... That one little feather she had as a starter. But now that's enough, because now she is smarter.”