Abelard Quotes

I love it when you speak computationally," I texted. "It makes me want to slap on a lab coat and get to work."
Abelard didn't text me back.
"Abelard?"
"I'm sorry," he texted. "I was distracted by the thought of you only wearing a white lab coat. I believe it is possible that you are the best girlfriend in the history of girlfriends."
"I do my best." My best. It's not often that I get to say these words. ~ Laura Creedle

You're not going to work at McDonald's." Abelard resumed shaking his head from side to side. A tic--or maybe a world of no. I didn't know. ~ Laura Creedle

We call an intention good which is right in itself, but the action is good, not because it contains within it some good, but because it issues from a good intention. ~ Peter Abelard

Alone thou goest forth, O Lord, in sacrifice to die; is this thy sorrow naught to us who pass unheeding by? Our sins, not thine, thou bearest, Lord; make us thy sorrow feel, till through our pity and our shame love answers love's appeal. This is earth's darkest hour, but thou dost light and life restore; then let all praise be given thee who livest evermore. Grant us with thee to suffer pain that, as we share this hour, thy cross may bring us to thy joy and resurrection power. ~ Peter Abelard

Our redemption through the suffering of Christ is that deeper love within us which not only frees us from slavery to sin, but also secures for us the true liberty of the children of God, in order that we might do all things out of love rather than out of fear - love for him that has shown us such grace that no greater can be found. ~ Peter Abelard

Memory supplies the place of a mistress ~ Pierre Abelard

Logic has made me hated in the world. ~ Peter Abelard

The purpose and cause of the incarnation was that
He might illuminate the world by His wisdom
and excite it to the love of Himself. ~ Peter Abelard

Abelard had on Wayfarer sunglasses, a dark blue windbreaker over a blue striped shirt, like he was on his way to a casual day of yachting. He looked cool and collected. The very opposite of me. ~ Laura Creedle

The men who abandon themselves to the passions of this miserable life, are compared in Scripture to beasts. ~ Peter Abelard

Instead of the smoldering, soul-baring, Abelard-to-Heloise-sans-castration solicitations you rightfully deserve, you're getting stupefying lines like: I'm listening to NPR. Do you want to come over and make out? ~ Maria Dahvana Headley

I'd spent my entire life as a teacup with a jagged crack running down the side, an imperfect vessel threatening to spill my contents onto the table at any random moment. Tolerated but not adored. It didn't seem like it would be even possible to love me. Probabilistically unlikely at best. But for Abelard, the jagged crack was the interesting thing about me. ~ Laura Creedle

Sometimes you may have not even talked to that person, just seen them at a distance, but inside something has ignited. It may be curiosity, to be able to understand the thoughts in that person's head, their views on the world and how they can make you feel as a person. ~ Emily Williams

By doubting we are led to enquiry, and by enquiry we discern the truth. ~ Pierre Abelard

The beginning of wisdom is found in doubting; by doubting we come to the question, and by seeking we may come upon the truth. ~ Pierre Abelard

For Abelard, the death of Christ on the Cross did not, strictly speaking, redeem man: it only offered him an example of supreme humility, charity, and self-sacrifice. Bernard asserts, against Abelard, that Christ became man precisely in order to redeem mankind from sin, deliver man from the power of the devil, and to become, instead of fallen Adam, the new head of a redeemed and sanctified human race. Jesus, says Saint Bernard, not only taught us justice but gave us justice. He not only showed us His love by dying for us on the Cross, but by the effects of His death He really and objectively causes His charity to exist and act in our hearts. In, doing so, He actually destroys sin in our souls and communicates to us a new life which is totally supernatural and divine. The effect of our redemption is therefore a complete and literal regeneration of those souls to whom its fruits are applied. Without this dogmatic basis the whole mystical theology of Saint Bernard would be incomprehensible. The purpose of all his mystical and ascetic teaching is to show us how to co-operate with the action of divine grace so that our redemption and regeneration may not remain a dead letter but may actually influence all our conduct and find expression in every part of our lives ~ Thomas Merton

I preferred the weapons of dialectic to all the other teachings of philosophy, and armed with these, I chose the conflicts of disputation rather than the trophies of war. ~ Peter Abelard

Religious men often think about death, and Abelard had given some thought to his last words. "I told you so" had not been on the list. The ~ Max Gladstone

Chess is a good way to learn, to keep your brain fit and the ego in check, a mental form of your local gymnasium. Those who see chess merely as a means of self-proof make the game experience uncomfortable and drive many of the better, more sensitive brains to analysis, correspondence, problems, studies and the like. ~ Peter Abelard

Under the pretext of study we spent our hours in the happiness of love, and learning held out to us the secret opportunities that our passion craved. Our speech was more of love than of the books which lay open before us; our kisses far outnumbered our reasoned words. ~ Peter Abelard

The Son of God took our nature, and in it took upon himself to teach us by both word and example even to the point of death, thus binding us to himself through love. ~ Peter Abelard

The fact is, the great intellectuals of the western religious tradition from Augustine to Aquinas and Peter Abelard became philosophically dominant. The intellectual tradition was preserved. The great intellectuals of the Islamic tradition like Averroes and Avicenna became heretics whose influence disappeared under the weight of rote preaching and practice. Islam as a result has a moral code, a legalistic system of right and wrong, but no evolved ethical tradition. ~ R. Joseph Hoffmann

Halt! How are you? What have you been doing? Where's Abelard? How's Crowley? What's this all about?"
"I'm glad to see you rate my horse more important than our Corps Commandant," Halt said, one eyebrow rising in the expression that Will knew so well. Early in their relationship, he had thought it was an expression of displeasure. He had learned years ago that it was, for Halt, the equivalent of a smile. ~ John Flanagan

It is by doubting that we come to investigate, and by investigating that we recognize the truth. ~ Peter Abelard

Abelard did not look up from the god at his feet. ~ Max Gladstone

It was killing me to think that there was a right and a wrong thing to do. Right for Abelard was wrong for me, and wrong for Abelard was right for me. And nothing made sense except that love is sacrifice and pain. ~ Laura Creedle

And, finally, about silence - An idle or unnecessary word is the
same thing as excessive speech; hence, Augustine says in the first
book of his
Retractions,
"I cannot call it excessive speech when what
is said is needed, no matter how many words are used."
12
Solomon
tells us, "In excessive speech sin shall not be wanting, but he that
refraineth his lips is most wise."
13
Where
sin shall not be wanting,
we
must especially beware and guard against the condition all the more
when it is so dangerous and difficult to avoid. This is what Saint
Benedict did, saying, "Monks should study silence at all times."
14
Studying silence
is something more than simply
keeping silent,
for
study is the pointed application of the mind to accomplish a given
task. We do many things in negligence or even against our will, but
we cannot
study
a thing without acting with purpose and will
The apostle James, however, tells us how difficult it is to curb the
tongue, but also how beneficial it will be. "We all offend in many
things," he says,
but if any man offend not in word, then he is a perfect
man. . . . For every nature of beasts and birds and serpents
and the rest is tamed, and hath been tamed, by the nature of
man, but the tongue no man can tame. . . . The tongue is
indeed a small part of the body . . . but see how small a fire
Pierre Abelard

And so, it is not our own life that we live, but the lives of the dead, and the soul that dwells within us is no single spiritual entity, making us personal and individual, created for our service, and entering into us for our joy. It is something that has dwelt in fearful places, and in ancient sepulchres has made its abode. It is sick with many maladies, and has memories of curious sins. It is wiser than we are, and its wisdom is bitter. It fills us with impossible desires, and makes us follow what we know we cannot gain. One thing, however, Ernest, it can do for us. It can lead us away from surroundings whose beauty is dimmed to us by the mist of familiarity, or whose ignoble ugliness and sordid claims are marring the perfection of our development. It can help us to leave the age in which we were born, and to pass into other ages, and find ourselves not exiled from their air. It can teach us how to escape from our experience, and to realise the experiences of those who are greater than we are. The pain of Leopardi crying out against life becomes our pain. Theocritus blows on his pipe, and we laugh with the lips of nymph and shepherd. In the wolfskin of Pierre Vidal we flee before the hounds, and in the armour of Lancelot we ride from the bower of the Queen. We have whispered the secret of our love beneath the cowl of Abelard, and in the stained raiment of Villon have put our shame into song. We can see the dawn through Shelley's eyes, and when we wander with Endymion the M ~ Oscar Wilde

Who, Abelard demanded, would forgive such a God for killing his own son? Abelard proposed that Christ died for the sake of love, providing a model of self-sacrificial passion for humankind. Salvation entailed imitating Christ in his love for others, the love that God revealed in Jesus's death for his friends. As Christ had done, we also do. As contemporary theologians Rita Nakashima Brock and Rebecca Parker say of Abelard's view, "The atonement created a deeper love for God than would have been possible without it," creating the prospect that human hearts could be transformed "from fear to love."36 ~ Diana Butler Bass

By doubting we come to enquiry, and through enquiry we perceive truth. ~ Pierre Abelard

Assiduous and frequent questioning is indeed the first key to wisdom ... for by doubting we come to inquiry; through inquiring we perceive the truth ... ~ Pierre Abelard

Look, three love affairs in history, are Abelard and Eloise, Romeo and Juliet and the American media and this President at the moment. But this doesn't matter over time. Reality will impinge. If his programs work, he's fine. If it doesn't work, all of the adulation of journalists in the world won't matter. ~ George Will

The key to wisdom is this
constant and frequent questioning ... for by doubting we are led to question and by questioning we arrive at the truth. ~ Pierre Abelard

Song: Heloise and Abelard by Elizabeth Devlin. Beyond the a propros subject matter, this lady can really play the Autoharp. This song sounds like something you'd find on a gramophone record. ~ Lauren Groff

I have followed the procedure of the ancient painter
Zeuxis, who worked in a material temple as I propose to work in a
spiritual one. As Cicero tells the story, the people of Croton asked
Zeuxis to decorate a temple they held in high esteem with the finest
paintings he could devise.

He approached the task with care,
selecting five of the town's most beautiful women to sit beside him
as he worked and model their beauty for his painting. There were
several good reasons for this. Zeuxis, we know, was a master in portraying
women's beauty, which by nature is more elegant and delicate
than men's. But as Cicero makes it a point to explain, he chose
several
women because he did not think he could find
one
who was
uniformly lovely in all her parts. Nature, he thought, had never conferred
such beauty on a single woman that all her parts should have
an equal share: nothing composed by nature is complete in all
respects, as if, in bestowing all her bounties in one place, nature
would have none left to bestow elsewhere.
Similarly, in my depiction of the beauty of the soul ~ Pierre Abelard

Heloise learned to love Abelard solely for who he was. That forbidden love brought her nothing but pain, but she would rather have shame and pain with Abelard than peace and happiness without him. ~ Gary Thomas

By doubting we are led to enquire, and by enquiry we perceive the truth. ~ Peter Abelard

Halt's heavy-shafted, long arrow was almost buried in its side, driven there by the full power of the Ranger's mighty longbow. He'd stuck the charging monster right behind the left shoulder, driving the head of the arrow into and through the pig's massive heart.
A perfect shot.
Halt reined in Abelard in a shower of snow and hurled himself to the ground, throwing his arms around the shaking boy. Will, overcome with relief, buried his face into the rough cloth of the Rang'ers cloak. He didn't want anyone to see the tears of relief that wer streaming down his face.
Gently, Halt took the knife from WIll's hand.
"What on earth where you hoping to do with this?" he asked. ~ John Flanagan

But this isn't human! When has this country ever been human, Abelard? You're the historian. You of all people should know that. ~ Junot Diaz

Maybe we should have gone with him," he said, a few minutes after his friend was lost to sight.
"Three of us would make four times the noise he will," Halt said.
Horace frowned, not quite understanding the equation. "Wouldn't three of us make three times the noise?"
Halt shook his head. "Will and Tug will make hardly any noise. Neither will Abelard and I. But as for you and that moving earthquake you call a horse ... " He gestured at Kicker and left the rest unsaid. ~ John Flanagan

It is always some consolation in sorrow to feel that it is shared, and any burden laid on several is carried more lightly or removed. ~ Heloise

By doubting we come to questioning, and by questioning we perceive the truth, ~ Peter Abelard

Language is generated by the intellect and generates the intellect. ~ Peter Abelard

By doubting we come to the question, and by questioning we may come upon the truth. ~ Pierre Abelard

Against the disease of writing one must take special precautions, since it is a dangerous and contagious disease. ~ Pierre Abelard