Susan Howatch Quotes

Sin is when you turn away from God - or, in the other language, alienation occurs when the ego, that erratic, unreliable driver of the personality, temporarily turns aside from the great quest for integration with the inner self, the self that's authentic, the self that contains the potential to be fully human, fully fulfilled and fully alive.

I am a lover of truth; and if you think of truth as being multifaceted and so huge that we human beings can't fully comprehend it, then obviously it makes sense to put all the facts together - to compare disciplines and try to advance the sum of knowledge by exploration and examination.

There is no timetable for grief," said Bronwen Morgan. "Grief isn't a train which you catch at the station. Grief has its own time, and grief's time is beyond time, and time itself ... isn't very important.

Never think God doesn't listen when you tell Him what you want.

What could be more rational than the decision to use my gifts in a way which would most clearly manifest my moral and intellectual convictions?' My

No demon can withstand the power of Christ, said my father, repeating the words he had used long ago, and what he meant was that no dissociated mind can withstand the integrating power of the Living God whose spark lies deep in the core of the unconscious mind and who can not only heal the shattered ego but unify the entire personality.

Life's not about the day when you win the prizes - it's about all the days in between. p 255

It doesn't do to be sentimental about cats; the best ones don't respect you for it

Better to live in the truth, however terrible, than to murder your true self by living a lie.

There's a pattern. Never, never doubt that there's a pattern. There's a pattern always. Everywhere. In everyone.

Science destroys only the false ideas about religion; the true ideas it complements and explores.)

One wonders what would happen in a society in which there were no rules to break. Doubtless everyone would quickly die of boredom.

You've asked enough questions about evil. But you never asked once about love."
So I asked him to tell me about it, but of course his definition lay beyond words. He just went on sitting with me in the dark and taking the weight of my pain.

Practice makes perfect and although God did create Adam he was more accomplished when the time came for him to create Eve.

Morality's like mink," I said. "It's great if you can afford it.

Religion is about integration, about successfully bringing the selfish ego into line with the centre of the personality where God exists, as a divine spark, in every human being. Religion is about helping man to live in harmony with his true self and to become the person God's designed him to be.

If you are a Christian, you want to give as much as you can away. It sounds pious, but it's not a duty; it's a kind of joy.

The advantage of telling the truth is that one is so much more likely to sound convincing.

I was wondering if the scene in the drawing-room had been a triumph or a disaster or merely a chaotic piece of bad taste verging on bathos, but I reflected that the only important question was whether I had communicated my message to my parents. I continued to smoke my cigarette and occasionally I shuddered. I wondered dimly how anyone ever survived their families.

The organist was almost at the end of the anthem's long introduction, and as the crescendo increases the cathedral began to glitter before my eyes until I felt as if every stone in the building was vibrating in anticipation of the sweeping sword of sound from the Choir.

The note exploded in our midst, and at that moment I knew our creator had touched not only me but all of us, just as Harriet had touched that sculpture with a loving hand long ago, and in that touch I sensed the indestructible fidelity, the indescribable devotion and the inexhaustible energy of the creator as he shaped his creation, bringing life out of dead matter, wresting form continually from chaos. Nothing was ever lost, Harriet had said, and nothing was ever wasted because always, when the work was finally completed, every article of the created process, seen or unseen, kept or discarded, broken or mended – EVERYTHING was justified, glorified and redeemed.

Everything in the world is part of a design. Everything has meaning and purpose and a place in the pattern of existence, only it's not always possible to understand what that design is. Only God can understand the design, because he invented it.

Sin/ alienation is psychological disease which if unhealed can lead to the living hell of lost hopes and blighted lives.

The gifts of the Spirit can be recognized by their fruits.

Lonely, very lonely to have a past no one else can share.

> ... all I could think was what hell it is for the survivors when death slams into life without warning and smashes every fixed point on the emotional map.

Think of me as the porter ... and consider the possiblity that life might be less exhausting if you unloaded some of your bags on to my empty trolley.

I was ten years old when I first saw the inheritance and twenty years old when I first saw Janna Roslyn, but my reaction to both was identical. I wanted them.

It is an author's primary duty to entertain. Sling out all the philosophical terms, but keep the reader turning the page.