Home > Author > Michael D. O'Brien
141 " We must do whatever is possible without going beyond the boundaries of the divine principles. We cannot take up the weapons of evil in order to defeat evil. To do so, even in the defense of good, would be to be doubly defeated. I believe that is Satan’s ultimate objective. "
― Michael D. O'Brien , Father Elijah: An Apocalypse (Children of the Last Days, #4)
142 " Why does man insist on trying to make his Utopia in the midst of a battleground? "
143 " Each tool reshapes the one who is apparently the master of the tool. I ask myself this: At what point does the tool, the servant, become the real master? "
― Michael D. O'Brien , Voyage to Alpha Centauri: A Novel
144 " Everyone is molded”, said his mother. “We choose what to mold our children with. Nothing grows in a vacuum. If you think you’re making a free human being just by letting him grow spontaneously, you won’t end up with a free human being. You’ll have a patchwork boy composed of whatever is prowling about in his culture. He’ll be about as far from freedom as you can get. "
― Michael D. O'Brien , Strangers and Sojourners (Children of the Last Days #1)
145 " garden. I have been defeated, "
146 " Why is there so much evil in the world?” She sighed. It had been easier when he was younger and was asking where thunder comes from and how do chicks know when to hatch themselves. “Evil?” she said now, doubting his understanding of the word. “What kind of evil do you mean?” “Like the war, those terrible things Jan went through, the Jews and all that.” “Oh.” She was silent for such a long breath that he wondered if she intended to answer. It was the duty of grandparents to inform the generations of the conditions into which they had been born. Though silence itself might speak most eloquently. "
147 " Did you know that the root of the word religion is religare? It means to reconnect. You see, there’s a gash in the fabric of existence, and the only way to bind it together is to make new life. You can’t just sit there hating the wound, Tan, or indulging in bitterness. Whatever you become in life, always ask yourself, am I making more life or am I making more death? "
148 " In time of crisis it is better to do any intelligent thing quickly than to hesitate, searching for the ideal. "
149 " Was there a missing component in all human beings? The rural masses seeking the metropolis; the urban young fleeing to the woods. Women pretending to be men; men becoming more like women; everyone aping divinity in his desperation to escape creaturehood? "
150 " You mean, how have we kept together all these years? With so much to separate us?” “Yes. How did you?” “Well, it wasn’t always serene. But many questions do resolve themselves without words. You stand side by side for so long and have other things to fight than each other.” Yes, she loved the man, her husband. But still did not know him. At least not with the knowledge of the laboratory. It was an inner kind of knowing maybe, an underdeveloped sense. "
151 " There were no words passing through their minds, though the scene of violence did play and replay itself, and their own roles within it grew more heroic with the colorations that time will give to the simplest of events. "
152 " Assisi was like something, but like what? Like something one had always known, but never seen. Something perceived from afar, like a wind from the promised land that greeted the stranger and sojourner coming up out of bondage from Egypt. It was joy, no doubt about that. But a joy unlike any other joy he had ever experienced. Unexpected joy in a dark time. Curious joy. There was no other word that approximated it. A taste of sweetness like the fecundity of grape arbors in the terraces below, "
153 " In the schoolyard they had begun to gravitate toward each other, as outcasts will if they have not yet been taught to despise themselves. "
154 " Words are gold, split and shared as coinage, small pebbles, emblems offered back and forth-given, received; given, received-expanding the vocabulary of the soul "
― Michael D. O'Brien , The Island of the World
155 " To presume that we have received in advance a precise decryption of the symbolic prophecies in the book of Revelation—a route map or survivalist manual, as it were—is to weaken our faculty of discernment and our openness to the guidance of the Holy Spirit and the angels. This weakness can lead us to the tyranny of unholy fears on one hand or to self-reliance on the other, and both reactions will bring about increased vulnerability to the adversary’s deceptions. "
― Michael D. O'Brien , Elijah in Jerusalem (Children of the Last Days #7)
156 " Ah no, you desire the humblest coin, and stamped upon it the word Beauty. MONK Long past are the days when once I thought this coin would ransom the heart of a dark age. "
― Michael D. O'Brien , Sophia House (Children of the Last Days #5)
157 " The serpent hated the light and knew he had no power to hurt it, except through its creatures. "
158 " Perhaps, after all, his anguish was so persuasive that it could eclipse the most real things and make them appear as shadows, and at the same time make shadows into an appearance of the real. "
159 " He knows the human heart cannot resist a cry of “Why” when innocence is ruined; "
160 " and hearing only silence, the heart must erupt in agony: “Where is God? Where is God?” And as the years of silence spread, while the ravager despoils at will, would you or I see the corruption of a child and not take arms? Or watch our lifetime’s work erupt in flame at the whims of blind men, and not be tempted to reach for a sword? "