29 Quotes by Morris L. West

If prayer fails I am in a greater darkness yet, not knowing whether I have presumed too much or believed too little.

I feel the life slipping out of me. When the pain comes, I cry out, but there is no prayer in it, only fear. I kneel and recite my office and the Rosary but the words are empty - dry gourds rattling in the silence. The dark is terrible and I feel so alone. I see no signs but the symbols of contradiction. I try to dispose myself to faith, hope and charity, but my will is a blown reed in the winds of despair.

One solved nothing by waving the commandments like a bludgeon at people's heads. There was no point in shouting damnation at a man who was already walking himself to hell on his own two feet. One had to pray for the Grace of God and then go probing like a good psychologist for the fear that might condition him to repentance or the love that might draw him toward it.

If you spend your whole life waiting for the storm, you’ll never enjoy the sunshine.

It costs so much to be a full human being that there are very few who have the Love and the courage to pay the price. One has to abandon altogether the search for security and reach out to the risks of living with both arms. One has to embrace life.

One has to accept pain as a condition of existence. One has to court doubt and darkness as the cost of knowing. One needs a will stubborn in conflict, but apt always to the total acceptance of every consequence of living and dying.

There was no cure for the human condition because every man read the present and plotted the future in the light of his own past.

Once you accept the existence of God – however you define him, however you explain your relationship to him – then you are caught forever with his presence in the center of all things.

Man is a creature who walks in two worlds and traces upon the walls of his cave the wonders and the nightmare experiences of his spiritual pilgrimage.