“If we wish to do justice to the historical enterprise, we must take past for what it was. And that means that we must resist the temptation to scour the past for examples or precursors of modern science. We must respect the way earlier generations approached nature, acknowledging that although it may differ from the modern way, it is nonetheless of interest because it is part of our intellectual ancestry.”

“It may be that considerations of justice are a central element of ethical thought that transcends the relativism of distance. Perhaps this, too, comes from a feature of the modern world. We have various conceptions of social justice, with different political consequences; each has comprehensible roots in the past and in our sentiments. Since we know that we do not accept their past legitimations, but otherwise are not sure how to read them, we are disposed to see past conceptions of justice as embodiments of ideas that still have a claim on modern people. To this extent, we see them as in real confrontation with each other and with modern ideas.”

“We must welcome the future, remembering that soon it will be the past; and we must respect the past, remembering that it was once all that was humanly possible.”

“It happens then that God may be approached; that we may ask of him, but if we do ask of him we must ask in Faith. We must believe. If we do not believe we will not obtain. This principle of faith seems to be the means of approaching the Almighty.”

“While we may not be called to martyr our lives, we must martyr our way of life. We must put our selfish ways to death and march to a different beat. Then the world will see Jesus.”

“We practice wonder by resisting the temptation to hurry past things worth seeing, but it can take work to transcend our preconceived standards for what that worth might be... This is one of the blessings of the urban nature project: without the overly magnificent to stop us in our tracks, we must seek out the more subversively magnificent. Our sense of what constitutes wildness is expanded, and our sense of wonder along with it.”