Quotes from Signs of Life: 40 Catholic Customs and Their Biblical Roots

“If we do not fill our mind with prayer, it will fill itself with anxieties, worries, temptations, resentments, and unwelcome memories.”
― Scott Hahn, quote from Signs of Life: 40 Catholic Customs and Their Biblical Roots

“The first Christians were eucharistic by nature: they gathered for “the breaking of the bread and the prayers.” They were formed by the Word of God, the “apostles’ teaching.” When they met as a Church, their worship culminated in “fellowship”—the Greek word is koinonia, communion. The Mass was the center of life for the disciples of Jesus, and so it has ever been. Even today, the Mass is where we experience the apostolic teaching and communion, the breaking of the bread and the prayers.”
― Scott Hahn, quote from Signs of Life: 40 Catholic Customs and Their Biblical Roots

“St. Thomas Aquinas taught that water has been a natural sacrament since the dawn of creation. In the age of nature—from Adam through the patriarchs—water refreshed and cleansed humankind.”
― Scott Hahn, quote from Signs of Life: 40 Catholic Customs and Their Biblical Roots

“As Catholics, we are free to cultivate a rich life of piety, drawing from the treasures of many lands and many ages.”
― Scott Hahn, quote from Signs of Life: 40 Catholic Customs and Their Biblical Roots

“Sometimes suffering is what’s best for us, if only because it keeps us from sinning or tempting others to sin.”
― Scott Hahn, quote from Signs of Life: 40 Catholic Customs and Their Biblical Roots

“The Catholic life—the great Christian tradition—is a tremendous inheritance from two millennia of saints in many lands and circumstances.”
― Scott Hahn, quote from Signs of Life: 40 Catholic Customs and Their Biblical Roots

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Popular quotes

“No, non imiterò mai coloro che cancellano le proprie tracce, ripudiano il proprio passato e sono morti, anche se con equilibrismi intellettuali fanno finta di essere vivi. Le mie radici sono laggiù, all’Est, su questo non v’è alcun dubbio. Anche se trovo difficile e spiacevole spiegare chi sono, bisogna pur tentare di farlo.”
― Czesław Miłosz, quote from Native Realm: A Search for Self-Definition

“معظم الشعوب، ككثير من الناس، لا يكون مطواعاً في غير شبابه، فهو إذا شاب تعذّر إصلاحه، والعادات إذا ما استقرت والأوهام إذا ما تأصلت حيناً كان من الأمور الخطره أن يراد إصلاحها، حتى إن الشعب لا يطيق مسّ أمراضه لمعالجتها، وهو في هذا كأولئك المرضى الجبناء الذين يرتعشون عند منظر الطبيب”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, quote from The Social Contract

“Sylphid was beginning to play professionally, and she was subbing as second harpist in the orchestra at Radio City Music Hall. She was called pretty regularly, once or twice a week, and she’d also got a job playing at a fancy restaurant in the East Sixties on Friday night. Ira would drive her from the Village up to the restaurant with her harp and then go and pick her and the harp up when she finished. He had the station wagon, and he’d pull up in front of the house and go inside and have to carry it down the stairs. The harp is in its felt cover, and Ira puts one hand on the column and one hand in the sound hole at the back and he lifts it up, lays the harp on a mattress they keep in the station wagon, and drives Sylphid and the harp uptown to the restaurant. At the restaurant he takes the harp out of the car and, big radio star that he is, he carries it inside. At ten-thirty, when the restaurant is finished serving dinner and Sylphid’s ready to come back to the Village, he goes around to pick her up and the whole operation is repeated. Every Friday. He hated the physical imposition that it was—those things weigh about eighty pounds—but he did it. I remember that in the hospital, when he had cracked up, he said to me, ‘She married me to carry her daughter’s harp! That’s why the woman married me! To haul that fucking harp!’ “On those Friday night trips, Ira found he could talk to Sylphid in ways he couldn’t when Eve was around. He’d ask her about being a movie star’s child. He’d say to her, ‘When you were a little girl, when did it dawn on you that something was up, that this wasn’t the way everyone grew up?’ She told him it was when the tour buses went up and down their street in Beverly Hills. She said she never saw her parents’ movies until she was a teenager. Her parents were trying to keep her normal and so they downplayed those movies around the house. Even the rich kid’s life in Beverly Hills with the other movie stars’ kids seemed normal enough until the tour buses stopped in front of her house and she could hear the tour guide saying, ‘This is Carlton Pennington’s house, where he lives with his wife, Eve Frame.’ “She told him about the production that birthday parties were for the movie stars’ kids—clowns, magicians, ponies, puppet shows, and every child attended by a nanny in a white nurse’s uniform. At the dining table, behind every child would be a nanny. The Penningtons had their own screening room and they ran movies. Kids would come over. Fifteen, twenty kids.”
― Philip Roth, quote from I Married a Communist

“I met two or three men who were very kind to me. There was a magistrate who couldn't stand priests, and a priest who didn't have a good word to say for magistrates; and there was a landlord who let furnished rooms by the hour and spoke highly of both priests and magistrates, because both were his best clients.”
― Pitigrilli, quote from Cocaine

“You’ll fight, damn it. You’ll not give over this easily. God is not ready for you yet because I am not through with you. You’re going to wake up and you’re going to give me the words I’ve waited on for so long. Telling me you love me on the battlefield as we both lay dying doesn’t count. You’ll give them to me and mean them or so help me I’ll bury you in unconsecrated ground so that you never rest and you’ll be forced to dwell in this keep with me for eternity.”
― Maya Banks, quote from Never Love a Highlander

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About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.