Haniel Long Quotations

In youth the human body drew me and was the object of my secret and natural dreams. But body after body has taken away from me that sensual phosphorescence which my youth delighted in.

When people discuss religion, it is a pity that they often become excited and argue. We should merely listen, as one does on a dark night; we should merely gaze at the stars.

The moment one accosts a stranger or is accosted by him is above all in this life the moment of drama... Whoever we meet watches us intently at the quick, strange moment of meeting, to see whether we are disposed to be friendly.

To strip a man of all loyalties but those to the state, makes him not only a worm but a monster, without a shred of humanity.

A gang is the same as a wolf pack; gang members do not use their energies in friendship with one another, for they do not know what friendship is. If they are united, it is by the common bond of a desire to attack their world.

Free people make the only milieu possible in society for the full gift of one's self to church, state, and family. Free people enjoy and sustain and feel with one another because they live for one another. The paths of life are intermingled lives.

I do not believe that we can stop perfecting new ways of dying until we have found new ways of living. Every new life-way ought to prevent a new death-way.

When I meet a new person, I am on the lookout for signs of what he or she is loyal to. It is a preliminary clue to the sense of belonging, and hence of his or her humanity.

The most frightening pages of history are those which reveal how easily conditions making a desert of the human spirit may come into existence, with the oozings away of incentive and kindliness in our natural social structure.

I am no theologian. I am a layman. I am among those who are preached to, and who listen. It is not for me to preach. I should not willingly forego being a listener, a man who reads the Gospels and then listens to what others say that our Lord meant. But sometimes a listener speaks out, and listens to his own voice.