Miserere Quotes & Sayings

Miserere is about redemption, and the triumph of our best impulses over our worst. It's also about swords, monsters, chases, ghosts, magic, [and] court intrigues. It's also really, really good. — Alex Bledsoe

They have made you into monsters. Made Manon. And we feel sorry for you. — Sarah J. Maas

A felon could plead "benefit of clergy" and be saved by [reading aloud] what was aptly enough termed the "neck verse", which was very usually the Miserere mei of Psalm 51. — William Hazlitt

They had painted a lady leaning her arms on the sill of the window. This lady was waiting for a husband. Her flesh was slack and she was some forty-five years old. Perhaps she had been waiting since she was fifteen. A rose and mauve lady that had not yet gathered her flesh and her beauty into dark clothes, and still waited, like a rose stripped of its petals, with her faded colors and her artificial smile, bitter as a grimace. — Rafael Sanchez Ferlosio

The real reason why so few men believe in God is that they have ceased to believe that even a God can love them. — Thomas Merton

In religious affairs, history shows us that churches have their palmy days, and then again their times of drought. The Universal Church has been thus circumstanced; it has had its Pentecosts, its Reformations, its revivals; and between these there have been sorrowful pauses, in which there was much more cause for lamentation than for rejoicing, and the Miserere was more suitable than the Hallelujah. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

We are never done with thinking about our parents, I suppose, and come to know them better long after they are dead than we ever did when they were alive. — May Sarton

Whenever I think of God I can only conceive of Him as a Being infinitely great and infinitely good. This last quality of the divine nature inspires me with such confidence and joy that I could have written even a miserere in tempo allegro. — Joseph Haydn

I don't like a kind of workshop that is about editing
I don't want to sit there and be an editor. I don't want to tell someone how to "fix" a poem. — Natasha Trethewey

It used to be that almost all innovation came from the U.S. and a small number of other developed countries. That's no longer the case, and as China and India grow, it's changing even more. Expect a lot more Chinese and Indian Nobel prizes in the future. — Alex Tabarrok

I wish it was all a dream. Then I could wake up. — George R R Martin

For what? Nothing's going on here," he says. "Besides I like watching you sleep. You don't scowl. Improves your looks a lot. — Suzanne Collins

People don't read any more. It's a sad state of affairs. Reading's the only thing that allows you to use your imagination. When you watch films it's someone else's vision, isn't it?
[Interview in The Independent, 15 October 2005] — Lemmy Kilmister

I want to be somebody when I grow up. Somebody with grown-up dreams and screams for these dreams to be crossover dreams into reality. — Nyambi Nyambi

Excel in your field: Whatever you do, try to be the best at it. There is too much mediocrity all around and we have learnt to live with it. However, awesomeness has no place for mediocrity. And do not confuse excellence with elitism. Being excellent at your work is different from considering yourself superior to others. — Chetan Bhagat

Suttree surfaced from these fevered deeps to hear a maudlin voice chant latin by his bedside, what medieval ghost come to usurp his fallen corporeality. An oiled thumball redolent of lime and sage pondered his shuttered lids.
Miserere mei, Deus ...
His ears anointed, his lips ... omnis maligna discordia ... Bechrismed with scented oils he lay boneless in a cold euphoria. Japheth when you left your father's house the birds had flown. You were not prepared for such weathers. You'd spoke too lightly of the winter in your father's heart. We saw you in the streets. Sad. — Cormac McCarthy

Scotland have this habit of kicking themselves in the foot — Alan Brazil

Father, I do acknowledge and confess
That I this honor, I this pomp have brought
To Dagon, and advanc'd his praises high
among the Heathen round; to God have brought
Dishonor, obloquy, and op'd the mouths
Of Idolists, and Atheists
[ ... ]The anguish of my Soul, that suffers not
Mine eye to harbor sleep, or thoughts to rest.
This only hope relieves me, that the strife
With mee hath end. — John Milton