sim-uh-lee (noun)

“In words that have similar spellings in French and English, remembering to unstress the syllable you’re used to pronouncing with more force may take quite a bit of practice. It’s like ironing a stubborn pleat out of a pair of trousers.”

“And as when the land appears welcome to men who are swimming, after Poseidon has smashed their strong-built ship on the open water, pounding it with the weight of wind and the heavy seas, and only a few escape the grey water landward by swimming, with a thick scurf of salt coated upon them, and gladly they set foot on the shore, escaping the evil; so welcome was her husband to her as she looked upon him, and she could not let him go from the embrace of her white arms.”

‘The world is full of religions, ideologies and political movements that propel us to fuse with the collective, to give up being a peninsula, to turn into no more than a tiny speck, a molecule inside the mass of nationality, faith, movement. On the other hand, there are equally powerful forces that urge each of us to live like a desert island, to exist at every moment, every day of our lives, in a state of constant Darwinist war against all the other desert islands because these others, so we are told, are always competitors, always adversaries, and often enemies: if the Other has something, you do not have it. If you have it, the Other does not.’

‘But though I liked clergymen as I liked bears, I had as little wish to be in the Church as in the zoo.’

‘Without words and (I think) almost without images, a fact about myself was somehow presented to me. I became aware that I was holding something at bay, or shutting something out. Or, if you like, that I was wearing some stiff clothing, like corsets, or even a suit of armour, as if I were a lobster.’

‘...the horribly smashed men still moving like half-crushed beetles’

‘His humour was of the kind which I like best - not ‘jokes’ imbedded in the page like currants in a cake, still less (what I cannot endure), a general tone of flippancy and jocularity, but the humour which is not in any way separable from the argument but is rather (as Aristotle would say) the ‘bloom’ on dialectic itself. The sword glitters not because the swordsman set out to make it glitter but because he is fighting for his life and therefore moving it very quickly.‘

‘No Englishman will be able to understand my first impressions of England. When we disembarked, I suppose at about six next morning (but it seemed to be midnight), I found myself in a world to which I reacted with immediate hatred. The flats of Lancashire in the early morning are in reality a dismal sight; to me they were like the banks of Styx. The strange English accents with which I was surrounded seemed like the voices of demons.’

‘With my mother’s death all settled happiness, all that was tranquil and reliable, disappeared from my life. There was to be much fun, many pleasures, many stabs of Joy; but no more of the old security. It was sea and islands now; the great continent had sunk like Atlantis.‘

‘The result of posing your statements as questions is that others won’t hear you as owning your ideas; rather, they’ll see you as manipulative, or they’ll assume there’s room to pick apart your proposal or ignore it entirely. If you ask a question to camouflage a statement, it’s a little like trying to teach a pig to sing—it frustrates you and annoys the pig. If you’re worried about sounding too strident or pushy, consider adding language to the message that would make it more palatable—but at all costs avoid turning it into a question if it isn’t truly a request for information.’

‘Feedback is a little like medicine. You resist taking it, but you know it will make you better.‘

‘In his martyrdom, Kolbe didn’t just defy the Nazis; he revealed the emptiness of the power over others that they claimed. They could lock Kolbe up, deny him food, even end his life, but they couldn’t take away his will to love others as Christ does. In a place consecrated to killing, he was an icon of love, and the God Who is Love beats all idols hollow. Like Christ trampling down death by death in His Passion, Kolbe immolated the falsity of the Nazis’ constructed world.’

‘I don’t think I’m treating my guests well if I welcome them into my home, but then, like Bluebeard, locking away the remains of his murdered wives, keep all evidence that I’m a Christian hidden away.‘

‘Prayer opens the understanding to the brightness of Divine Light, and the will to the warmth of Heavenly Love--nothing can so effectually purify the mind from its many ignorances, or the will from its perverse affections. It is as a healing water which causes the roots of our good desires to send forth fresh shoots, which washes away the soul's imperfections, and allays the thirst of passion.’

‘Bear in mind that the bee while making its honey lives upon a bitter food: and in like manner we can never make acts of gentleness and patience, or gather the honey of the truest virtues, better than while eating the bread of bitterness, and enduring hardness. And just as the best honey is that made from thyme, a small and bitter herb, so that virtue which is practised amid bitterness and lowly sorrow is the best of all virtues.’

‘As white as an aspirin, she had once heard a rural French lady say.’

‘Kevin Henry stood around five foot six and looked as lithe and strong as a trapeze artist. He may have been adept with a mechanical digger, but he looked equally at home in his well-cut grey suit and pale green silk tie.’