I suppose one of the hardest things for a non-Catholic to realize is how easily a Catholic can combine official rigidity with non-official broadmindedness. Is that too complicated?

James Hilton, Lost Horizon: A Novel

Hermetic quote Hilman Horizon catholic

Consider also:

  1. “Again, it is not our purpose to elaborate the somewhat complicated history and understanding of these texts and their authorship, but it should be understood that until the 16th C. these texts were attributed to Dionysus the Areopagite (Acts 17), otherwise known as St. Denys, though scholarship has determined definitively that they are the work of a 4-5th C. Neoplatonic follower of Proclus.”
  2. “I didn’t ask to be born into this world”
  3. The Egyptian Book of the Dead
  4. “Sounds utopian, maybe. But the important word here is probably not the one you are thinking of. It’s trying.”
  5. “There was something rather Elizabethan about him—his casual versatility, his good looks, that effervescent combination of mental with physical activities. Something a bit Philip-Sidney-ish. Our civilization doesn’t often breed people like that nowadays. I made a remark of this kind to Rutherford, and he replied: ‘Yes, that’s true, and we have a special word of disparagement for them—we call them dilettanti.”