James Runcie Quotes

There are no absolutes.' 'I think there are,' said Sidney. 'Fairness, justice, toleration, support for the weak, care for those in need, truth and love.

The old don was finding it hard to live in Christian hope and the general trajectory of his thoughts was retrospective rather than anticipatory. He had recently met his first wife in a pub for a drink and he had expected, foolishly and romantically, that they might speak about the love that they had once shared and what might have been had they stayed together, but instead they had talked about growing deaf, their arthritis, and how much time they had left on earth. 'Old

Sidney was beginning to feel uncomfortable. As a priest he was used to informal confession, but he could never quite reconcile himself to the fact that it often contained quite a lot of detail. There were times when he wished people wouldn't tell him so much.

All he knew was that sometimes a man had to be grateful for normality, that a story could end less dramatically, and not half as badly as it might have done; that there was merit in an averted crisis, and that in finding his nephew Sidney had, at last, done something quietly responsible, without fuss or fanfare. Perhaps the rest of his life should be like this? he thought. It would involve a concentration on things close to the heart; a dedicated care of friends and family; a quieter existence, one that depended on listening harder and loving better; never resting in complacency; acknowledging faults, doubts and insecurities; the balance between solitude and company, the wish to escape and the need to come home: a loving attention.

Sidney remembered how strikingly original the poem was. For George Herbert, the time we spend on earth is not all too brief and transient but too long: because it detains human beings from a life outside time and with God.

Sidney was annoyed. What business was it of anyone else? His relationship with Amanda was private. He hated the idea of anyone talking about them. Now he would have to explain something that he didn't want to explain because he liked it all being vague and inexplicable.

First you get a dog, and then you develop a taste for wine. God knows what might happen next.

You know what they say about marriage? A man can either be right or happy.

He believed that the secret of happiness was to concentrate on things outside oneself. Introspection and self-awareness were the enemies of contentment, and

He remembered his old tutor at theological college telling him, 'There is something in each of us that cannot be naturally loved. We need to remember this about ourselves when we think of others.' On

The members of the family were like pillars in a Renaissance cloister, he thought, individually contributing to the whole design. Together they formed something stronger and more beautiful than anything they could achieve on their own. Then, at the end of their lives, the least they might be able to say was that they had understood what it was to take part in something greater than themselves. They had known love. They would defend it against anything that came after it; taking risks in order to care for each other in the face of an indifferent world, working as hard as they could to nurture, preserve and protect what they had found and made. Such a love was too precious to put in jeopardy. It was life itself.

The truest test of character is how we behave towards people who can do nothing for us.

We are Easter people,' he told the parishioners of Grantchester. 'This is not one day out of three hundred and sixty-five, but the mainspring of our faith. We carry the Easter message each day of our lives, lives in which the pain of the Cross and the suffering of humanity are followed by the uncomprehended magnitude of the Resurrection.

Love can be about more than attraction. I sometimes think it is more a question of sanctuary, a case of unassailable friendship.

Sidney had never been very good at differentiating between tasks that were urgent and those which were important, and often those tasks that seemed urgent, but were not important, took precedence over the duties that were important, but not urgent.

Autumn was his favourite time of year, not simply for its changing colours but for the crispness in the air and the sharpness of the light. As the leaves fell the landscape revealed itself, like a painting being cleaned or a building being renewed. He could see the underlying shape of things. This was what he wanted, he decided: moments of clarity and silence.

Do you know that line of Kierkegaard's, Canon Chambers? "There are many people who reach their conclusions about life like schoolboys: they cheat their master by copying the answer out of a book without having worked the sum out for themselves."

Keating had the appearance of a man who was reluctant to say what he had to say

I don't mean religious faith. I mean faith in our own abilities. We have to do the best we can with the talents we have, Geordie. The future is too unpredictable for anxiety.

But then, he continued, the idea of duality was also at the heart of Christianity. You had to be both a man and a Christian, and if there was ever a conflict between the two then it was his duty as a priest to put his acquired identity, as a man of faith, above his own essential nature. Sidney

You can't always enjoy writing. But you can enjoy having written.

I like it when no one knows what I'm going to do next. It makes everything more exciting.

He had never taken such dislike to a man before and immediately felt guilty about it. He remembered his old tutor at theological college telling him, 'There is something in each of us that cannot be naturally loved. We need to remember this about ourselves when we think of others.

The "wonder" felt by the shepherds at the Nativity, or the disciples at Pentecost; that sense of amazement when we experience something that is so far beyond our comprehension and yet it is still revealed to us in all its glory as a gift from the infinite. I think we've lost our awareness of what "wonder" really means: the more we content ourselves with the narrow confines of our existence, the less we wonder.

Passion is such a stronge emotion that it dominates everything. It's like a strong spice in a meal, or a dominant red in a painting. Your senses are drawn to it at the expense of everything else. Dominic and I were not physical friends, so to speak. But I did love him. We can't help loving the people we do, can we? But the love doesn't have to be physical. You can be equally intimate. It doesn't matter.

Sometimes such simple acts, which could not be rushed and took up a fixed amount of necessary time, were a respite from more lasting uncertainties and preoccupations. If he could concentrate more upon such manageable tasks (making this cocoa, looking after his wife, feeding his child, or teaching his dog to fetch a ball) then ideas, and even solutions, might come unbidden; thoughts that could make him a better priest, a kinder husband,

Introspection and self-awareness were the enemies of contentment,

Don't write to impress. Write to entertain.

The sky looked as if it had been shaded in charcoal, given a light wash of pale blue and left for the day.

He was puzzled by his mood. Despite the beauty of his surroundings, he found it curiously disconcerting. The art was almost too good to be true. What was it saying about humanity, and how much was the Renaissance culpable of creating the myth of individual rather than collective achievement? Was this the beginning of the desire for individual fame and recognition that contradicted Christian humility and shared responsibility; licensing the modern notion of ambition and selfish aspiration? On

There is only one religion - it is a way a man dies.

Only people with money can afford to say they have no need of it.