Quotes from Moloka'i

“Fear is good. In the right degree it prevents us from making fools of ourselves. But in the wrong measure it prevents us from fully living. Fear is our boon companion but never our master.”
― Alan Brennert, quote from Moloka'i

“Surrounded by darkness yet enfolded in light”
― Alan Brennert, quote from Moloka'i

“I've come to believe that how we choose to live with pain, or injustice, or death....is the true measure of the Divine within us.”
― Alan Brennert, quote from Moloka'i

“No. Grief and anger doesn’t shock me.” Catherine paused. “Rachel, do you remember that day at the convent when we saw the old biplane? Remember what I said?” Rachel laughed without amusement. “I don’t even remember what I said.” “’Who can doubt the presence of God in the sight of men whom He has given wings.’ I recall that so precisely because I’ve had time to consider my error.” She smiled. “God didn’t give man wings; He gave him the brain and the spirit to give himself wings. Just as He gave us the capacity to laugh when we hurt, or to struggle on when we feel like giving up. I’ve come to believe that how we choose to live with pain, or injustice, or death…is the true measure of the Divine within us. Some, like Crossen, choose to do harm to themselves and others. Others, like Kenji, bear up under their pain and help others to bear it. I used to wonder, why did God give children leprosy? Now I believe: God doesn’t give anyone leprosy. He gives us, if we choose to use it, the spirit to live with leprosy, and with the imminence of death. Because it is in our own mortality that we are most Divine.”
― Alan Brennert, quote from Moloka'i

“...she bid me to look out on the lawn at the leper girls who were running on lame feet, playing croquet with crippled hands.

"There is beauty," she said, "in the least beautiful of things.”
― Alan Brennert, quote from Moloka'i

“Learn how to smile in the cannibal pot and life will be so much easier.”
― Alan Brennert, quote from Moloka'i

“But it's a poor church that cares only for what happens to a soul after it leaves this life."

-Damien”
― Alan Brennert, quote from Moloka'i

“No land is more beautiful, and therefore more powerful. That is what I believe in, Aouli. I believe in Hawai'i. I believe in the land."

-Haleola”
― Alan Brennert, quote from Moloka'i

“What's it like? Being married?

Cold feet. Middle of the night you're sleeping, suddenly, wham, you've got ice cold feet warming themselves on the back of your legs.”
― Alan Brennert, quote from Moloka'i

“After a while the fear became a constant, cold companion, a simple fact of existence.”
― Alan Brennert, quote from Moloka'i

“An aching vacuum inside her sucking the air from her lungs. She hung her head and wept fiercely, the emptiness inside her growing larger not smaller; she felt as though it would grow so large it would suffocate her just as surely as the sea would have”
― Alan Brennert, quote from Moloka'i

“She had never been afraid of the dark, but then she had never known a dark like this before.”
― Alan Brennert, quote from Moloka'i

“Who can doubt the presence of God in the sight of men whom He has given wings?

I recall that so precisely because I've had time to consider my error. God didn't give man wings; He gave him the brain and the spirit to give himself wings. Just as He gave us the capacity to laugh when we hurt, or to struggle on when we feel like giving up.

I've come to believe that how we choose to live with pain, or injustice, or death...is the true measure of the Divine within us. Some choose to do harm to others. Others bear up under their pain and help others to bear it.”
― Alan Brennert, quote from Moloka'i

“...and all they could do was sit, sleep, eat, and be reminded day after day, night after night, of their disease and eventual death.”
― Alan Brennert, quote from Moloka'i

“None of the patients could say the experiments didn't yield some benefits. It was the way the experiments were conducted that grated: with cold, clinical detachment. Masks, gloves, and carbolic acid were the order of the day fora ll staff, and while this may have been prudent it only made isolated people feel even more isolated.”
― Alan Brennert, quote from Moloka'i

“They toured the new hospital, the renovated and expanded McVeigh Home, and the (named without apparent irony) Bay View Home for the Blind and Helpless.”
― Alan Brennert, quote from Moloka'i

“she would follow her father over the horizon and down the other side, where the world lay hidden.”
― Alan Brennert, quote from Moloka'i

“Then Rachel said, "Mama used to tell me that God saw everything, knew everything, even what was in our hearts."

"Yes," Catherine agreed, "especially there."

"So, He'd know, wouldn't he, what kind of pain was in your mama's heart when she took that medicine." She didn't wait for a reply. "So why can't you trust that God knows enough not to blame her for what she did.”
― Alan Brennert, quote from Moloka'i

“And sometimes she would dream again of being Namakaokahai'i, her waves rolling across burled coral beds, scattering moonlight, cresting higher and higher the farther she traveled over the reef. She was a colossus of water and motion soaring toward the black crescent of 'Awahuua Bay, her soul perched on the curling lip of the wave, riding it in the only way she could now; she felt the mana, the power in her waves, felt the rumble in her ocean depths.....”
― Alan Brennert, quote from Moloka'i

“How stupid could she be to think a clean person would love her -- would risk death and decay and banishment for love!”
― Alan Brennert, quote from Moloka'i

“Who can doubt the presence of God in the sight of men whom He has given wings.'...God didn't give man wings; He gave him the brain and the spirit to give himself wings. Just as He gave us the capacity to laugh when we hurt, or to struggle on when we feel like giving up...I've come to beliece that how we choose to live with painm or injustice, or death. . . . is the true measure of the Divine withing us. Some, like Crossen, choose to do harm to themselves adn others. Others, like kenji, bear up under their pain and help others to bear it. I used to wonder, why did God give children leprosy? Now I believe: God doesn't give anyone leprosy. He gives us, if we choose to use it, the spirit to live with leprosy, and with the imminence of death. Because it is in our own mortality that we are most Divine.”
― Alan Brennert, quote from Moloka'i

“God didn’t give man wings; He gave him the brain and the spirit to give himself wings. Just as He gave us the capacity to laugh when we hurt, or to struggle on when we feel like giving up. “I’ve come to believe that how we choose to live with pain, or injustice, or death . . . is the true measure of the Divine within us.”
― Alan Brennert, quote from Moloka'i

“I've come to believe that how we choose to live with pain, or injustice, or death...is the true measure of the Divine within us. Some, like Crossen, choose to do harm to themselves and others. Others, like Kenji, bear up under their pain and help other to bear it.”
― Alan Brennert, quote from Moloka'i

“By now the streets of Kalaupapa were filled with people racing for high ground - sick people crying
"Tsunami!" as nature played yet another mean trick on them, God's last best joke at their expense. It was,
after all, April Fool's Day.”
― Alan Brennert, quote from Moloka'i

“- he took her in his arms and cradled her; offering her not God's comfort but his own, merely human, consolation.”
― Alan Brennert, quote from Moloka'i

“It slowly dawned on the volunteers that they were not patients but subjects; separated from their friends and community in Kalaupapa, they felt like outcasts among outcasts.”
― Alan Brennert, quote from Moloka'i

“There is beauty in the least beautiful of things.”
― Alan Brennert, quote from Moloka'i

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“Old Time heaved a moldy sigh from tomb and arch and vault; and gloomy shadows began to deepen in corners; and damps began to rise from green patches of stone; and jewels, cast upon the pavement of the nave from stained glass by the declining sun, began to perish. Within the grill-gate of the chancel, up the steps surmounted loomingly by the fast darkening organ, white robes could be dimly seen, and one feeble voice, rising and falling in a cracked monotonous mutter, could at intervals be faintly heard. In the free outer air, the river, the green pastures, and the brown arable lands, the teeming hills and dales, were reddened by the sunset: while the distant little windows in windmills and farm homesteads, shone, patches of bright beaten gold. In the Cathedral, all became gee, murky, and sepulchral, and the cracked monotonous mutter went on like a dying voice, until the organ and the choir burst forth, and drowned it in a sea of music. Then, the sea fell, and the dying voice made another feeble effort, and then the sea rose high, and beat its life out, and lashed the roof, and surged among the arches, and pierced the heights of the great tower; and then the sea was dry, and all was still.”
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