Tazari Bentley Quotes

All finite things are limited expressions, graciously imparted, of that actuality that he possesses in infinite abundance. And, simply said, this way of thinking about God is - or so the classical traditions claim - the inevitable result of any genuinely coherent attempt to prescind from the conditions of dependent finitude to a rational definition of the divine. ~ David Bentley Hart

The notion that any discovery of empirical science could possibly reduce God's circumstances, so to speak, or have any effect whatsoever on the logical content of the concept of God or of creation is one of the vulgar errors I wish to expose below. ~ David Bentley Hart

Most people are middle class. Most people do wish their lives were better than they are. And I think by making my main characters ordinary, average guys, it helps readers identify with their problems. It also helps ground the supernatural events that follow in a recognizable reality and perhaps gives some of my wilder scenarios a little verisimilitude. ~ Bentley Little

One should not exaggerate the importance of trifles. Life, for instance, is much too short to be taken seriously. ~ Nicolas Bentley

The discourse of power is, of its nature, bombastic, pontifical, and domineering. ~ David Bentley Hart

Sir Humphrey Davy Abominated gravy. He lived in the odium Of having discovered sodium. Said to have been written as a schoolboy during a chemistry class at St. Paul's School. ~ E.C. Bentley

Lyotard has described the postmodern condition succinctly as "incredulity towards metanarratives":' an attitude commendable in itself, no doubt, but also one that can easily be translated into a dogmatic metanarrative of its own. In ~ David Bentley Hart

Enlightenment, if left unclouded by pathetic fancy, leads to a very special and bracing sort of nihilism - positivist, rationalist ... merciless. ~ David Bentley Hart

It seems obvious that both the religious and the irreligious are capable of varying degrees of tolerance or intolerance, benevolence or malice, depending on how they understand the moral implications of their beliefs. ~ David Bentley Hart

One can believe that faith is mere credulous assent to unfounded premises, while reason consists in a pure obedience to empirical fact, only if one is largely ignorant of both. It should be enough, perhaps, to point to the long Christian philosophical tradition, with all its variety, creativity, and sophistication, and to the long and honorable tradition of Christianity's critical examination and reexamination of its own historical, spiritual, and metaphysical claims. But more important in some ways, it seems to me, is to stress how great an element of faith is present in the operations of even the most disinterested rationality. ~ David Bentley Hart

But, in fact, materialism is among the most problematic of philosophical standpoints, the most impoverished in its explanatory range, and among the most willful and (for want of a better word) magical in its logic, even if it has been in fashion for a couple of centuries or more. ~ David Bentley Hart

THE VIOLENCE OF early modernity was expressed nowhere more purely or on a grander scale than in the international and internecine conflicts of the period, which custom dictates should be called "the wars of religion." Given, though, the lines of coalition that defined these conflicts, and given their ultimate consequences, they ought really to be remembered as the first wars of the modern nation-state, whose principal purpose was to establish the supremacy of secular state authority over every rival power, most especially the power of the church. ~ David Bentley Hart

...the God in whom the majority of Christians throughout history have professed belief would appear to be evil (at least, judging by the dreadful things we habitually say about him). And I intend nothing more here than an exercise in sober precision, based on the presumption that words should have some determinate content.

(from Radical Orthodoxy 3.1 (2015): 1-17) ~ David Bentley Hart

We live only to dance. If living were not an essential prerequisite, we would abstain. ~ Toni Bentley

Just what does one wear on a sorta, kind date with someone when you're in love with someone else? ~ Harper Bentley

You don't put bumper stickers on a Bentley. ~ Kim Kardashian

When one forgets the distinction between method and truth, one becomes foolishly prone to respond to any question that cannot be answered from the vantage of one's particular methodological perch by dismissing it as nonsensical, or by issuing a promissory note guaranteeing a solution to the problem at some juncture in the remote future, or by simply distorting the question into one that looks like the kind one really can answer after all. ~ David Bentley Hart

There is, after all, nothing inherently reasonable in the conviction that all of reality is simply an accidental confluence of physical causes, without any transcendent source or end. Materialism is not a fact of experience or a deduction of logic; it is a metaphysical prejudice, nothing more, and one that is arguably more irrational than almost any other. ~ David Bentley Hart

An honest and self-aware atheism, therefore, should proudly recognize itself as the quintessential expression of heroic irrationalism: ~ David Bentley Hart

It goes without saying that one generally should not try to dissolve disparate creeds into one another, much less into some vague, syncretistic, doctrinally vacuous 'spirituality. ~ David Bentley Hart

The only ideological or political factions that have made any attempt at an ethics consistent with Darwinian science, to this point at least, have been the socialist eugenics movement of the early twentieth century and the Nazi movement that sprang from it. Obviously, ~ David Bentley Hart

I quot the drink name because pouring fifteen different types of liquor into a glass of Coke does not an LIit make. But I learned an invaluable lesson that night: after one glass, who gives a shit anymore. Your taste buds sure don't. ~ Harper Bentley

Naturalism, therefore, can never be anything more than a guiding prejudice, an established principle only in the sense that it must be indefensibly presumed for the sake of some larger view of reality; ~ David Bentley Hart

My principal purpose here is to point out again, yet more insistently, that one cannot meaningfully consider, much less investigate, the reality of God except in a manner appropriate to the kind of reality God has traditionally been understood to be. Contemplative discipline, while not by any means the only proper approach to the mystery of God, is peculiarly suited to (for want of a better word) an 'empirical' exploration of that mystery. If God is the unity of infinite being and infinite consciousness, and the reason for the reciprocal transparency of finite being and finite consciousness each to the other, and the ground of all existence and all knowledge, then the journey toward him must also ultimately be a journey toward the deepest source of the self. As Symeon the New Theologian was fond of observing, he who is beyond the heavens is found in the depths of the heart; there is nowhere to find him, William Law (1686–1761) was wont to say, but where he resides in you; for Ramakrishna (1836–1886), it was a constant refrain that one seeks for God only in seeking what is hidden in one's heart; (...) The practice of contemplative prayer, therefore, is among the highest expressions of rationality possible, a science of consciousness and of its relation to the being of all things, (...) ~ David Bentley Hart

Physics explains everything, which we know because anything physics cannot explain does not exist, which we know because whatever exists must be explicable by physics, which we know because physics explains everything. There is something here of the mystical. ~ David Bentley Hart

He who enjoys a good neighbor, said the Greeks, has a precious possession. Same goes for neighbour's wife. ~ Nicolas Bentley

It was becoming more and more evident that Salem was a town that celebrated individuality, a real live-and-let-live kind of place. Melody felt a gut punch of regret. Her old nose would have fit in here.
"Look!" She pointed at the multicolored car whizzing by. Its black door were from a Mercedes coupe, the white hood from a BMW; the silver trunk was Jaguar, the red convertible top was Lexus, the whitewall tires were Bentley, the sound system was Bose, and the music was classical. A hood ornament from each model dangled from the rear view mirror. Its license plate appropriately read MUTT.
"That car looks like a moving Benton ad."
"Or a pileup on Rodeo drive." Candace snapped a picture with her iPhone and e-mailed to her friends back home. They responded instantly with a shot of what they were doing. It must have involved the mall because Candace picked up her pace and began asking anyone under the age of fifty where the cool people hung out. ~ Lisi Harrison

Who the fuck do you think you are, trying to take my date home?" Bentley shouted.
"I am her home, fucknut. ~ Penelope Ward

Hence Augustine defined the highest state of human freedom not as "being able not to sin" (posse non peccare) but as "being unable to sin" (non posse peccare): a condition that reflects the infinite goodness of God, who, because nothing can hinder him in the perfect realization of his own nature, is "incapable" of evil and so is infinitely free.
That, ~ David Bentley Hart

I wanted fame, but I thought it would be incremental, and I became afraid of the overnight-sensation thing. ~ Wes Bentley

I was wiser at 30 than I am now. My judgment was better at 12. If you look out the windshield of a Hyundai or a Bentley, you see the same road. ~ Bill Withers

Men will always seek gods in whose name they may perform great deeds or commit unspeakable atrocities, even when those gods are not gods but "tribal honor" or "genetic imperatives" or "social ideals" or "human
destiny" or "liberal democracy." Then again, men also kill on account of money, land, love, pride, hatred, envy, or ambition. They kill out of conviction or out of lack of conviction. Harris ~ David Bentley Hart

Anyone in horror's path is irrevocably altered. ~ Bentley Little

These last years are as important as any that have gone before, nor will any other of our years vitiate or excuse them. The struggle continues. ~ Phyllis Bentley

I've got an extra-specific story about Dr. Dre. I saw him when I was 9 years old in Compton - him and Tupac. They were shooting the second 'California Love' video. My pops had seen him and ran back to the house and got me, put me on his neck, and we stood there watching Dre and Pac in a Bentley. ~ Kendrick Lamar

All the major theistic traditions insist at some point that our language about God consists mostly in conceptual restrictions and fruitful negations. "Cataphatic" (or affirmative) theology must always be chastened and corrected by "apophatic" (or negative) theology. We cannot speak of God in his own nature directly, but only at best analogously, and even then only in such a way that the conceptual content of our analogies consists largely in our knowledge of all the things that God is not. ~ David Bentley Hart

God, however, is first glimpsed within nature's still greater powerlessness - its transitoriness and contingency and explanatory poverty. ~ David Bentley Hart

One thing I think celebrities shy away from is exposing the reality that we're all the same. Somebody's not more important because they have a Bentley or a big house or a famous boyfriend or plastic surgery - we're all the same. ~ Aubrey O'Day

The truth of no truths becomes, inevitably, truth: a way of naming being, language, and culture that guards the boundaries of thought against claims it has not validated. ~ David Bentley Hart

Women are taught that size doesn't matter, that it's the motion in the ocean. But this is a theory propagated by those bright guys with insecurities who need big theories. ~ Toni Bentley

God is thus experienced as that bliss in which our natures have their consummation because that bliss is already, in God, the perfect consummation of the divine unity of being and consciousness: infinite being knows itself in infinite consciousness and therefore infinitely rejoices. ~ David Bentley Hart

My car is right over here," Kraunauer said, steering me toward a modest-looking gray sedan with a stylized letter "B" on each hubcap. And in spite of that, it wasn't until I opened the door and saw the walnut-lined instrument panel and soft glove-leather seats that I realized the "B" stood for "Bentley." I slid onto the sweet-smelling seat and tried not to soil it by sweating or thinking impure thoughts. ~ Jeff Lindsay

The first theological insight I learned from Gregory of Nyssa - and I suspect the last to which I shall cling when all others fall away - is that the Christian doctrine of creatio ex nihilo is not merely a cosmological or metaphysical claim, but also an eschatological claim about the world's relation to God, and hence a moral claim about the nature of God in himself. In the end of all things is their beginning, and only from the perspective of the end can one know what they are, why they have been made, and who the God is who has called them forth from nothingness.

(from Radical Orthodoxy 3.1 (2015): 1-17) ~ David Bentley Hart

It is just as often the case, however, that men are violent solely from expedience, because they believe in no higher law than the demands of the moment, ~ David Bentley Hart