The Good Life

Top Highlights

“We have to learn how victory can emerge out of suffering and defeat, and how we lose our lives to save them. We have to be obedient to our calling in order to be free, and we need to acknowledge our own evil in order to embrace the good. These upside-down truths are counterintuitive, decidedly counter-cultural. They are also wise beyond knowing.” (source)

“first of life’s great paradoxes: Out of suffering and defeat often comes victory.” (source)

“Blaise Pascal, the great French philosopher and mathematician, once said that there are only two kinds of people in the world: seekers and non seekers. Either we are pilgrims looking for answers in order to make sense of our world, or we are wanderers who have turned off onto byways of distraction or despair, alienating ourselves from wonder. If you are reading this book, you probably are a seeker. That’s good. To be alive is to seek.” (source)

“Freedom lies not in conforming to the world’s expectations or even realizing what we take to be our deepest wishes; it lies in following the call on our lives.” (source)

“Talking with Randy makes it clear why those who suffer from same-sex attraction, whether men or women, find judgments of their condition as disordered so threatening. They have often been the victims of childhood abuse and maddeningly dysfunctional families, as well as the object of scorn by their childhood peers. The gay life holds the promise of the approval, affection, and attention that they never received as children. It seems to provide an identity they have lacked all their lives and a community whose solidarity is forged through pleasure. Anyone would be threatened by having all this taken away.” (source)