Opus Dei Quotes

Opus Dei is an efficient machine run to achieve world power. ~ Penny Lernoux

I'm fascinated by power, especially veiled power. Shadow power. The National Security Agency. The National Reconnaissance Office. Opus Dei. The idea that everything happens for reasons we're not quite seeing. ~ Dan Brown

Don't judge without having heard both sides. Even persons who think themselves virtuous very easily forget this elementary rule of prudence. ~ Josemaria Escriva

Dei sub numine viget, Under God's power she flourishes ~ Princeton University

[...] Like calling someone a fool or an idiot. It's one of those things Jesus tells us never to do. Calling someone a pervert without acknowledging our own inner pervert might lead to the destruction - or at least the perversion - of our own soul. We become perverts in our determination to catch a pervert. ~ David Dark

If this conviction had not been a strongly emotional one and if those searching for knowledge had not been inspired by Spinoza's Amor Dei Intellectualis, they would hardly have been capable of that untiring devotion which alone enables man to attain his greatest achievements. ~ Albert Einstein

Christ, as the ultimate Imago Dei is alluded to in scripture as being without external beauty in the Classical sense, and should better be thought of as one who passed through all the slime and mire of a fallen and sinful creation in order to redeem it. His own body is to be remembered for the marks it bears-even in resurrection-of the scars of his sacrificial death. For the Christian, a theory of beauty might better begin at this point. ~ John Walford

Mission began with God. God has a mission. That's why he made for himself a people, but his mission came before people. His mission came before the Bible. He gave his mission a Bible. He gave his mission a people. God's mission, God's project, is to bless. Open doors are an invitation to be part of the missio Dei. ~ John Ortberg

Sapiens adjuvabit opus astrorum quemadmodum agricola terrae naturam": A wise man assisteth the work of the stars as the husbandman helpeth the nature of the soil. ~ Henry David Thoreau

In the, Dei Verbum, there is a great statement of Vatican II: The bible is the word of god but in the words of men. ~ Robert E. Barron

Whether it is Bach or Mozart that we hear in church, we have a sense in either case of what gloria Dei, the glory of God, means. The mystery of infinite beauty is there and enables us to experience the presence of God more truly and vividly than in many sermons. But there are already signs of danger to come. Subjective experience and passion are still held in check by the order of the musical universe, reflecting as it does the order of the divine creation itself. But there is already the threat of invasion by the virtuoso mentality, the vanity of technique, which is no longer the servant of the whole but wants to push itself to the fore. During the nineteenth century, the century of self-emancipating subjectivity, this led in many places to the obscuring of the sacred by the operatic. The dangers that had forced the Council of Trent to intervene were back again. In similar fashion, Pope Pius X tried to remove the operatic element from the liturgy and declared Gregorian chant and the great polyphony of the age of the Catholic Reformation (of which Palestrina was the outstanding representative) to be the standard for liturgical music. A clear distinction was made between liturgical music and religious music in general, just as visual art in the liturgy has to conform to different standards from those employed in religious art in general. Art in the liturgy has a very specific responsibility, and precisely as such does it serve as a wellspring of culture, which in the final ana ~ Benedict XVI

Life begins from guilty feeling of self glory. Life finishes at truthful love of God's glory. ~ Indonesia123

The Declaration of Independence, Abraham Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address, and Martin Luther King's 'Letter from the Birmingham Jail' all have their metaphysical roots in the biblical concept of the imago dei ((i.e. humans bearing the image of God). If pro-lifers are irrational for grounding basic human rights in the concept of a transcendent Creator, these important historical documents--all of which advanced our national understanding of equality--are irrational as well. ~ Scott Klusendorf

Know this: I, Mercurius, have here set down a full, true and infallible account of the Great Work. But I give you fair warning that unless you seek the true philosophical gold and not the gold of the vulgar, unless you heart is fixed with unbending intent on the true Stone of the Philosophers, unless you are steadfast in your quest, abiding by God's laws in all faith and humility and eschewing all vanity, conceit, falsehood, intemperance, pride, lust and faint-heartedness, read no farther lest I prove fatal to you. For I am the watery venomous serpent who lies buried at the earth's centre; I am the fiery dragon who flies through the air. I am the one thing necessary for the whole Opus. I am the spirit of metals, the fire which does not burn, the water which does not wet the hands. If you find the way to slay me you will find the philosophical mercury of the wise, even the White Stone beloved of the Philosophers. If you find the way to raise me up again, you will find the philosophical sulphur, that is, the Red Stone and Elixir of Life. Obey me and I will be your servant; free me and I will be your friend. Enslave me and I am a dangerous enemy; command me and I will make you mad; give me life and you will die. ~ Patrick Harpur

At a tender age, I commandeered half a quire of foolscap from my father's desk and sat down to write a book ... I had observed onprinted fly leaves the words "By the author of, etc." ... So under the title of my prospective work I wrote: By the author of "Les Miserables," "The Woman in White," "Dombey and Son," "Tom Brown's Schooldays" and "Our Life in the Highlands," the last-named being an opus of good Queen Victoria. I had not read all these works but they existed on our bookshelves, and I hoped to produce something worthy of comparison. ~ Rheta Childe Dorr

Glorifying the world is self dissapointment. Glorifying God is self contentment. ~ Indonesia123

Needless to say, the song ["Hallelujah"] was now a climax in every show [of the 2009 Leonard Cohen tour], received like holy scripture. It belonged in a category with seeing Bob Dylan sing "Like a Rolling Stone" or watching Bruce Springsteen perform "Born to Run" - it was an event that people simply wanted to witness, to say they had seen. It took on a power that had to do with the song's history first, its feeling second, and its details hardly at all. Every performance carried with it a sense of where this song had been, who had sung it,where and how every listener had first encountered it; it had reached a place where it was something to be experienced, rather than listened to. ~ Alan Light

It's amazing that schools still offer courses in musical composition. What a useless thing to spend money on -- to take a course in college to learn how to be a modern composer! No matter how good the course is, when you get out, what the fuck will you do for a living? (The easiest thing to do is become a composition teacher yourself, spreading 'the disease' to the next generation.)

One of the things that determines the curriculum in music schools is: which of the current fashions in modern music gets the most grant money from the mysterious benefactors in Foundation-Land. For a while there, unless you were doing serial music (in which the pitches have numbers, the dynamics have numbers, the vertical densities have numbers, etc) -- if it didn't have a pedigree like that, it wasn't a good piece of music. Critics and academicians stood by, waiting to tell you what a piece of shit your opus was if your numbers didn't add up. (Forget what it sounded like, or whether it moved anybody, or what it was about. The most important thing was the numbers. ~ Frank Zappa

There is another apt Latin expression: Materiam superabat opus. (The workmanship is better than the material.) The material we've been given genetically, emotionally, financially, that's where we begin. We don't control that. We do control what we make of that material, and whether we squander it. ~ Ryan Holiday

Then Elizabeth came, bearing a tray of cakes and sweets, and finally Harriet, who carried with her a small sheaf of paper - her current opus, Henry VIII and the Unicorn of Doom .
"I'm not certain Frances is going to be appeased by an evil unicorn," Anne told her.
Harriet looked up with one arched brow. "She did not specify that it must be a good unicorn."
Anne grimaced. "You're going to have a battle on your hands, that's all I'm going to say on the matter."
Harriet shrugged, then said, "I'm going to begin in act two. Act one is a complete disaster. I've had to rip it completely apart."
"Because of the unicorn?"
"No," Harriet said with a grimace. "I got the order of the wives wrong. It's divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, widowed."
"How cheerful."
Harriet gave her a bit of a look, then said, "I switched one of the divorces with a beheading."
"May I give you a bit of advice?" Anne asked.
Harriet looked up.
"Don't ever let anyone hear you say that out of
context. ~ Julia Quinn

Master Plato once said that Lux est umbra Dei; light is the shadow of God. I say this way: Light is the god of shadow! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

The only power that can effect transformations of the order (of Jesus) is love. It remained for the 20th century to discover that locked within the atom is the energy of the sun itself. For this energy to be released, the atom must be bombarded from without. So too, locked in every human being is a store of love that partakes of the divine- the imago dei, image of god ... And it too can be activated only through bombardment, in its case, love's bombardment. The process begins in infancy, where a mother's initially unilateral loving smile awakens love in her baby and as coordination develops, elicits its answering smile ... A loving human being is not produced by exhortations, rules and threats. Love can only take root in children when it comes to them- initially and most importantly from nurturing parents. Ontogenetically speaking, love is an answering phenomenon. It is literally a response. ~ Huston Smith

Boswell, when he speaks of his Life of Johnson, calls it my magnum opus, but it may more properly be called his opera, for it is truly a composition founded on a true story, in which there is a hero with a number of subordinate characters, and an alternate succession of recitative and airs of various tone and effect, all however in delightful animation. ~ James Boswell

If there is a thing I truly despise, it is being addressed as "dearie." When I write my magnum opus, A Treatise Upon All Poison, and come to "Cyanide," I am going to put under "Uses" the phrase "Particularly efficacious in the cure of those who call one 'Dearie. ~ Alan Bradley

third understanding of the imago Dei also gained popularity in the twentieth century, though it too had historical predecessors. In the early part of the twentieth century, Karl Barth argued that the central defining feature of the imago Dei is human relationality. Hence, this view is called the relational view of the imago Dei. Humans are created in the image of the Triune God and thus are meant to find their essence and destiny in community with one another and with God The following three essays offer arguments in favor of each of these views. ~ Gregory A. Boyd

I'm fine. It's a lie. I am not fine. My head is a symphony of pain, a sadistic master maestro conducting an opus of excruciating, devastating perfecting. ~ Kiersten White

When we live holy we will glorify self but when we glorify God we will live holy. ~ Indonesia123

The biggest challenge [for movie Agnus dei] - working in a foreign country with a predominantly Polish cast and crew - also proved to be the biggest blessing. Being surrounded by all this change , [both] culturally [and] linguistically, was a new and refreshing inspiration. ~ Anne Fontaine

Why do I live in the desert? Because the desert is the *locus Dei*. ~ Edward Abbey

Fern showed him an organizational plan that had the name Magnum Opus, Incorporated. It was a marvelous engine for doing violence to the spirit of thousands of laws without actually running afoul of so much as a city ordinance. ~ Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Det ille veniam facile, cui venia est opus - the one who needs pardon should readily grant it ~ Seneca.

There are two styles of walls "opus reticulatum," now used by everybody and the ancient style called "opus incertum." Of these, the reticulatum looks better, but its construction makes it likely to crack ... On the other hand, in the opus incertum, the rubble lying in courses and imbricated , makes a wall which though not beautiful, is stronger. ~ Marcus Vitruvius Pollio

Country music was the most segregated kind of music in America, where even whites played jazz and even blacks sang in the opera. Something like country music was what lynch mobs must have enjoyed while stringing up their black victims. Country music was not necessarily lynching music, but no other music could be imagined as lynching's accompaniment. Beethoven's Ninth was the opus for Nazis, concentration camp commanders, and possibly President Truman as he contemplated atomizing Hiroshima, classical music the refined score for the high-minded extermination of brutish hordes. Country music was set to the more humble beat of the red-blooded, bloodthirsty American heartland. ~ Viet Thanh Nguyen

Cecil fingered the Agnus Dei round her neck. "Why shouldn't they have lucky things?" she said.

"Well, it's all very complicated," Dominic said. "And perhaps I'm not the one to explain it."

"Why not?" Cecil asked, surprised.

"Because I don't know if I believe," he said seriously, "and if I did, I would be of the religion King James was banished for."

"A Catholic? Why?" Cecil was even more surprised.

"Because what they teach all hangs together in one piece," said Dominic. "It's either that or nothing for me. ~ Meriol Trevor

J. R. R. Tolkien, the near-universally-hailed father of modern epic fantasy, crafted his magnum opus The Lord of the Rings to explore the forces of creation as he saw them: God and country, race and class, journeying to war and returning home. I've heard it said that he was trying to create some kind of original British mythology using the structure of other cultures' myths, and maybe that was true. I don't know. What I see, when I read his work, is a man trying desperately to dream.
Dreaming is impossible without myths. If we don't have enough myths of our own, we'll latch onto those of others - even if those myths make us believe terrible or false things about ourselves. Tolkien understood this, I think because it's human nature. Call it the superego, call it common sense, call it pragmatism, call it learned helplessness, but the mind craves boundaries. Depending on the myths we believe in, those boundaries can be magnificently vast, or crushingly tight. ~ N.K. Jemisin

Magnum Opus : Without me, you all,
would not be Breathing, no more.
Religious Leader Petra Cecilia Maria Hermans
Religion of Blue Circle
October 17, 2016 ~ Petra Hermans

He considered for a moment, then started to play a piece that was very familiar to Ruth, although she had no idea what it was. It was lilting and wistful, and she could have sung the melody if she had wished.
"Alright?" He raised his eyebrows inquiringly.
"Yes. Exactly."
It was effortless and perfect, and he played it through to the end, closing with the softest and most delicate chords, which hung and faded in the quiet hall like the grains of dust raining through the evening light. Ruth was touched. It was all she had wanted. He did not move until there was complete silence again, then he closed the lid without saying anything, and stood up, shoving back the chair. ... "What was that piece?"
"A Brahms waltz."
"Hasn't it got a name?" she wanted it to remember.
"Number fifteen. Opus thirty-nine."
It hadn't sounded like numbers to Ruth. ~ K.M. Peyton

In every corpus, there is magnum opus. ~ Anyaele Sam Chiyson

Best listened to in a windowless room, better than best in an airless room - correctly speaking, a bunker sealed forever and enwrapped in tree-roots - the Eighth String Quartet of Shostakovich (Opus 110) is the living corpse of music, perfect in its horror. Call it the simultaneous asphyxiation and bleeding of melody. The soul strips itself of life in a dusty room. ~ William T. Vollmann

Listen: you are not yourself, you are crowds of others, you are as leaky a vessel as was ever made, you have spent vast amounts of your life as someone else, as people who died long ago, as people who never lived, as strangers you never met. The usual I we are given has all the tidy containment of the kind of character the realist novel specializes in and none of the porousness of our every waking moment, the loose threads, the strange dreams, the forgettings and misrememberings, the portions of a life lived through others' stories, the incoherence and inconsistency, the pantheon of dei ex machina and the companionability of ghosts. There are other ways of telling. ~ Rebecca Solnit

Mission [is] understood as being derived from the very nature of God. It [is] thus put in the context of the Trinity, not of ecclesiology or soteriology. The classical doctrine of the missio dei as God the Father sending the Son, and God the Father and the Son sending the Spirit [is] expanded to include yet another "movement": Father, Son, and Holy Spirit sending the church into the world. ~ David Bosch