In eternity this world will be like Troy, I believe, and all that has passed here will be the epic of the universe, the ballad they sing in the streets.

I think the attempt to defend belief can unsettle it, in fact, because there is always an inadequacy in argument about ultimate things.

When my mother left me waiting for her, [she] established in me the habit of waiting and expectation which makes any present moment most significant for what it does not contain.

If we focused on using the opportunities we have, which are very great by any standard - health, longevity, comfort and privacy, endless resources of culture and information - we would not just navigate this world, we would leave a good inheritance to succeeding generations.

I'm amazed at what I have taken for granted. How to truly take in our situation I don't know, but I wish I had started asking myself that question earlier than I did.

To recognize our bias toward error should teach us modesty and reflection, and to forgive it should help us avoid the inhumanity of thinking we ourselves are not as fallible as those who, in any instance, seem most at fault. Science can give us knowledge, but it cannot give us wisdom. Nor can religion, until it puts aside nonsense and distraction and becomes itself again.

It's a difficult thing to describe theology, what it means and how it disciplines thinking. Certainly, theology is the level at which the highest inquiry into meaning and ethics and beauty coincides with the largest-scale imagination of the nature of reality itself.