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)

Spiritual Quote of the Day (Edwin O’Connor, on ‘The Essential Goodness of Man’)

“[W]hile only a fool can look around him and smile serenely in unwatered optimism, nevertheless the wonder of it all is to me the frequency with which kindness, the essential goodness of man does break through, and as one who has received his full measure of that goodness, I can say that for me, at least, it is in the long succession of these small, redemptive instants, just as much as in the magnificence of heroes, that the meaning and the glory of man is revealed.”—Pulitzer Prize-winning Irish-American novelist Edwin O’Connor (1918-1968), The Edge of Sadness (1961)

Movie Quote of the Day (‘The Two Towers,’ With One of My Favorite Inspirational Scenes)

Frodo [played by Elijah Wood]: “I can't do this, Sam.”

Sam [played by Sean Astin]: “I know. It's all wrong. By rights we shouldn't even be here. But we are. It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it's only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't. They kept going. Because they were holding on to something.”

Frodo: “What are we holding onto, Sam?”

Sam: “That there's some good in this world, Mr. Frodo... and it's worth fighting for.”—The Two Towers [Part Two of The Lord of the Rings] (2002), screenplay by Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, Stephen Sinclair, and Peter Jackson, adapted from the novel by J.R.R. Tolkien, directed by Peter Jackson

Quote of the Day (Elijah Wood, on the Courage of Frodo in ‘Lord of the Rings’)

“One of the great messages of the [“The Lord of the Ring”] books as it pertains to Frodo and the hobbits in general is a sense that even the smallest person, not just in stature but in terms of what one feels they’re capable of doing, is capable of greatness, of affecting real change, of having real impact. What Frodo was up against seemed insurmountable, and yet he was able to accomplish it largely because of goodness, kindness, a purity of heart and perhaps innocence. Those are the things that hobbits embody, and inherently why they’re able to withstand the corruption of the Ring for longer than humans. But what makes Frodo unique is a way of seeing the world without any kind of cynicism. There’s also courage, maybe even a blind courage, of not necessarily knowing what’s ahead and therefore not allowing himself to be afraid. If I’m to learn one thing from all of that, it’s that there’s fortitude in his outlook that makes it all possible.”—Actor Elijah Wood, on what he learned playing Frodo in the film adaptation of the J.R.R. Tolkien trilogy, quoted by Carlos Aguilar, “Frodo Still Lives In One Actor’s Heart,” The New York Times, Dec. 22, 2021

Spiritual Quote of the Day (St. Thomas Aquinas, on Goodness and Beauty)

“The beautiful is the same as the good, and they differ in aspect only. For since good is what all seek, the notion of good is that which calms the desire; while the notion of the beautiful is that which calms the desire, by being seen or known. Consequently those senses chiefly regard the beautiful, which are the most cognitive, viz. sight and hearing, as ministering to reason; for we speak of beautiful sights and beautiful sounds. But in reference to the other objects of the other senses, we do not use the expression ‘beautiful,’ for we do not speak of beautiful tastes, and beautiful odors. Thus it is evident that beauty adds to goodness a relation to the cognitive faculty: so that ‘good’ means that which simply pleases the appetite; while the ‘beautiful’ is something pleasant to apprehend.”— St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) [Angelic] Doctor of the Church, Summa Theologiae (1485)

Quote of the Day (Kurt Vonnegut, on the Triumph of Good)

“There is no reason why good cannot triumph as often as evil. The triumph of anything is a matter of organization. If there are such things as angels, I hope that they are organized along the lines of the Mafia.”—American novelist and short-story writer Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007), The Sirens of Titan (1959)

Quote of the Day (Henry Fielding, on Good and Bad Men)

“It is much easier to make good men wise, than to make bad men good.”—English novelist Henry Fielding (1707-1754), The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling (1749)

The image accompanying this post shows Albert Finney as the title character in the Oscar-winning adaptation of Henry Fielding’s classic. As you might surmise in this scene, Tom Jones, for all his good instincts, is very, very far from wisdom.

Quote of the Day (Pope Francis, on How ‘Goodness Always Tends to Spread’)

“Goodness always tends to spread. Every authentic experience of truth and goodness seeks by its very nature to grow within us, and any person who has experienced a profound liberation becomes more sensitive to the needs of others. As it expands, goodness takes root and develops. If we wish to lead a dignified and fulfilling life, we have to reach out to others and seek their good.”—Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium (“Joy of the Gospel”), Nov. 24, 2013

Quote of the Day (Pope Francis, on Our ‘Shared Responsibility for Others and the World’)

“We must regain the conviction that we need one another, that we have a shared responsibility for others and the world, and that being good and decent are worth it.” —Pope Francis, Laudato Si (“On Care for Our Common Home”), May 24, 2015

Quote of the Day (C.S. Lewis, on ‘The Smallest Good Act Today’)

“The smallest good act today is the capture of a strategic point from which, a few months later, you may be able to go on to victories you never dreamed of.” —C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (1952)

Quote of the Day (Henry David Thoreau, on the ‘Only Investment That Never Fails’)

“Our whole life is startlingly moral. There is never an instant's truce between virtue and vice. Goodness is the only investment that never fails.”—Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854)

(Thanks to my friend Brian for the inspiration.)