Spiritual Quote of the Day (St. Thomas Aquinas, on ‘God's Love for Things’)

“God's love for things is better than ours. For our will is not the cause of goodness, but responds to goodness. Our liking does not produce the good of the thing we love; it is the other way round—the goodness, real or apparent, of the thing calls forth our love, whether that love be a love which rests content with its object as it finds it or a love which seeks to improve it. But God’s love, which makes things out of nothingness, impregnates all the goodness they have.”— Italian theologian and Doctor of the Church St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), Selected Writings, translated by George N. Shuster and translated by Thomas Gilby (1971)

Movie Quote of the Day (‘A Man for All Seasons,’ on Men and Angels)

Sir Thomas More [played by Paul Scofield]: “God made the angels to show Him splendor, as He made animals for innocence and plants for their simplicity. But Man He made to serve Him wittily, in the tangle of his mind.”—A Man for All Seasons (1966), screenplay by Robert Bolt, based on his play, directed by Fred Zinnemann

Quote of the Day (John Dryden, Invoking the World’s ‘Creator Spirit’)

“Creator Spirit, by whose aid

The World's Foundations first were laid,

Come, visit ev'ry pious Mind;

Come, pour thy Joys on Human Kind;

From Sin, and Sorrow set us free;

And make thy Temples worthy Thee.”—English poet John Dryden (1631-1700), Veni, Creator Spiritus (“Come, Creator Spirit”) (1693), in Dryden (The Laurel Poetry Series), general editor Richard Wilbur (1962)

(The image accompanying this post is The Creation of the Animals, a painting by the Italian Renaissance master Tintoretto in 1550. It is displayed in the Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice.)

Quote of the Day (Denise Levertov, on ‘Creator Spirit’s Deep Embrace’)

“As swimmers dare

to lie face to the sky

and water bears them,

as hawks rest upon air

and air sustains them,

so would I learn to attain

freefall, and float

into Creator Spirit’s deep embrace,

knowing no effort earns

that all-surrounding grace.”-- Denise Levertov, “The Avowal,” from The Selected Poems of Denise Levertov, edited by Paul A. Lacey (2002)

Two days ago would have marked the 90^th birthday of British-born American poet Denise Levertov (1923-1997), who could range from public commentary (fiercely anti-Vietnam War verse) to intimate ruminations—not just between lovers, but between the individual and God, as here.

Quote of the Day (Mary Oliver, on God’s Gift of ‘Another Day’)

"Lord, when I sleep I feel you near.

When I wake, and you are already wiping the stars away,

I rise quickly, hoping to be like your wild child

the rose, the honey-maker the honey-vine;

a bird shouting its joy as it floats

through the gift you have given us: another day."—Mary Oliver, "More Beautiful than the Honey Locust Tree Are the Words of the Lord," in Thirst: Poems (2006)

I took this image of Chautauqua Lake two months ago while on vacation at the Chautauqua Institution in upstate New York.

Quote of the Day (Ralph Waldo Emerson, on What Creation Teaches About God)

“All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen.”—Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Immortality,” in The Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Vol. 8 (Letters and Social Aims) (1909)

Quote of the Day (St. Anthony of Padua, on the Beauty of Creation)

“Our thoughts ought instinctively to fly upwards from animals, men and natural objects to their Creator. If things created are so full of loveliness, how resplendent must be the One who made them! The wisdom of the Worker is apparent in such handiwork.”—Attributed to St. Anthony of Padua (1195-1231)

Quote of the Day (Elie Wiesel, on Despair and Creation)

“Out of despair, one creates. What else can one do? There is no good reason to go on living, but you must go on living. There is no good reason to bring a child into this world but you must have children to give the world a new innocence, a new reason to aspire toward innocence. As Camus said, in a world of unhappiness, you must create happiness.”—Holocaust survivor and Nobel Prize laureate Elie Wiesel, quoted by Michiko Kakutani, The Poet at the Piano: Portraits of Writers, Filmmakers, Playwrights, and Other Artists at Work (1988)