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If a congregation somewhere comes to life as Jerusalem at some hour, that carries no necessary implications for either the past or the future of that congregation. The Jerusalem occurrence is sufficient unto itself. There is—then and there—a transfiguration in which the momentary coincides with the eternal, the innocuous becomes momentous and the great is recognized as trivial, the end of history is revealed as the fulfillment of life here and now, and the whole of creation is beheld as sanctified.

— William Stringfellow An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land (1973)

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More quotes by William Stringfellow

The Bible deals with the sanctification of the actual history of nations and of human beings in this world as it is while that history is being lived.

An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land (1973)

This otherworldliness or antiworldliness is actually conformity to the world with a vengeance. And, for professed Christians, it is the most ignominious possible apostasy.

An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land (1973)

The Christian as revolutionary is constantly welcoming the gift of human life, for himself and for all men, by exposing, opposing, and overturning all that betrays, entraps, or attempts to kill human life.

William Stringfellow: Essential Writings (2013)

In this story, there is no other place actually known to human beings, except this world as it is—the place where life is at once being lived; there are no other places for which to search or yearn or hope—no utopia, no paradise, no otherworldly afterlife.

An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land (1973)

This is the vanity of every principality—and notable for a nation—that the principality is sovereign in history; which is to say, that it presumes it is the power in relation to which the moral significance of everything and everyone else is determined.

An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land (1973)

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A generation which ignores history has no past —and no future.

Robert A. Heinlein Time Enough for Love (1973)

From now on, everything in life will appear blurry to me. What’s the point of wiping my glasses when my vision has already left me?"

Sanu Sharma

You can never plan the future by the past.

Edmund Burke A Letter to a Member of the National Assembly (1791)

Nothing is there to come, and nothing past,
But an eternal now does always last.

Abraham Cowley Poems (1656)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: William Stringfellow (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.