Death Comes For The Archbishop Quotes
"As far as he could see, on every side, the landscape was heaped up into monotonous red sand-hills, not much larger than haycocks, and very much the shape of haycocks."
"Mais, c’est fantastique!" he muttered, closing his eyes to rest them from the intrusive omnipresence of the triangle."
"His devotions lasted perhaps half an hour, and when he rose he looked refreshed."
"They were so exactly like one another that he seemed to be wandering in some geometrical nightmare."
"The difficulty was that the country in which he found himself was so featureless—or rather, that it was crowded with features, all exactly alike."
"He had a kind of courtesy toward himself, toward his beasts, toward the juniper tree before which he knelt, and the God whom he was addressing."
"His brow was open, generous, reflective, his features handsome and somewhat severe."
"The blunted pyramid, repeated so many hundred times upon his retina and crowding down upon him in the heat, had confused the traveller, who was sensitive to the shape of things."
"The traveller dismounted, drew from his pocket a much worn book, and baring his head, knelt at the foot of the cruciform tree."
"A young priest, at his devotions; and a priest in a thousand, one knew at a glance."
"Many stars," he said presently. "What you think about the stars, Padre?"
"The wise men tell us they are worlds, like ours, Jacinto."
"I think not," he said in the tone of one who has considered a proposition fairly and rejected it. "I think they are leaders—great spirits."
"Perhaps they are," said the Bishop with a sigh. "Whatever they are, they are great."
"Let us say Our Father, and go to sleep, my boy."
"This plain might once have been an enormous city, all the smaller quarters destroyed by time, only the public buildings left."
"Ever afterward the Bishop remembered his first ride to Ácoma as his introduction to the mesa country."
"The country was still waiting to be made into a landscape."
"This was all that was left of the rich and populous Cicuyè of Coronado’s expedition."
"As if, with all the materials for world-making assembled, the Creator had desisted, gone away and left everything on the point of being brought together, on the eve of being arranged into mountain, plain, plateau."
"The rock of Ácoma had never been taken by a foe but once—by Spaniards in armour."
"The rock, when one came to think of it, was the utmost expression of human need; even mere feeling yearned for it."
"At first there was bitter feeling; the rich rancheros and the merry ladies of Albuquerque were very hostile to the French priest."
"He began his reforms at once. Everything was changed."
"The fickle Mexican population soon found as much diversion in being devout as they had once found in being scandalous."
"Father Vaillant wrote to his sister Philomène, in France, that the temper of his parish was like that of a boys’ school; under one master the lads try to excel one another in mischief and disobedience, under another they vie with each other in acts of loyalty."
"The Novena preceding Christmas, which had long been celebrated by dances and hilarious merrymaking, was this year a great revival of religious zeal."
"No priest can experience repentance and forgiveness of sin unless he himself falls into sin."
"The soul cannot be humbled by fasts and prayer; it must be broken by mortal sin to experience forgiveness of sin and rise to a state of grace. Otherwise, religion is nothing but dead logic."
"The dark things forbidden by your Church are a part of Indian religion."
"You are among barbarous people, my Frenchman, between two savage races."
"Padre Martínez printed a long and eloquent Proclamation giving an historical justification for his schism, and denying the obligation of celibacy for the priesthood."
"But for all that, our native priests are more devout than your French Jesuits. We have a living Church here, not a dead arm of the European Church."
"Our religion grew out of the soil, and has its own roots."
"We pay a filial respect to the person of the Holy Father, but Rome has no authority here."
"The country was continually reformed and re-coloured by the cloud shadows."
"The whole country seemed fluid to the eye under this constant change of accent, this ever-varying distribution of light."
"Their priests have their own kind of mysteries."
"I have the telling passages all written down somewhere. I will find them before you go. You have probably read them with a sealed mind."
"He was as much at home in the Bishop’s study as in his own pueblo—and he was never too much at home anywhere."
"They were almost square in shape, and at this distance seemed close together, though they were really some miles apart."
"The Bishop went to sleep thinking with satisfaction that he was beginning to have some sort of human companionship with his Indian boy."
"The top of the mesa was about ten acres in extent, the Bishop judged, and there was not a tree or a blade of green upon it."
"The white dwellings, two and three storeyed, were not scattered, but huddled together in a close cluster, with no protecting slope of ground or shoulder of rock, lying flat against the flat, bright against the bright—both the rock and the plastered houses threw off the sun glare blindingly."
"The Bishop kept his word, and never spoke of Jacinto’s cave to anyone, but he did not cease from wondering about it."
"It flashed into his mind from time to time, and always with a shudder of repugnance quite unjustified by anything he had experienced there."
"But west of the Pecos all that changed; here there was always activity overhead, clouds forming and moving all day long."
"Whether they were dark and full of violence, or soft and white with luxurious idleness, they powerfully affected the world beneath them."
"The sun was nowhere to be seen, the air was thick and grey and smelled of snow."
"The vista of pine trees ahead of them grew shorter and shorter through the vast powdering of descending flakes."
"In his experience, white people, when they addressed Indians, always put on a false face."
"At this moment the student, Trinidad, got up quietly, and after an obsequious bow to the Bishop, went with soft, escaping tread toward the kitchen."
"The Bishop’s eyes were not so sharp as Jacinto’s, but now, looking down upon the top of the farther mesa from the high land on which they halted, he saw a flat white outline on the grey surface—a white square made up of squares."
"The Bishop, following with his eye the straight, pointing Indian hand, saw, far away, two great mesas."
"There was an element of exaggeration in anything so simple!"
"The Bishop said he would be interested to see the passages from which he drew such conclusions, observing that he knew the writings of St. Augustine fairly well."
"The Bishop had never heard the Mass more impressively sung than by Father Martínez."
"It is the Indian manner to vanish into the landscape, not to stand out against it."
"The Bishop sat down on a boulder, still looking up at the cliff. 'That hill, Blanchet, is my Cathedral.'"
"The sky is the roof of the world; but here the earth was the floor of the sky."
"The Navajo came out of his house and took possession of Angelica by her bridle-bit."
"When I look up at this rock I can almost feel the Rhone behind me."
"These Indians disliked novelty and change. They came and went by the old paths worn into the rock by the feet of their fathers."
"The Cathedral is near my heart, for many reasons."
"We build for the future—better not lay a stone unless we can do that."
"The landscape one longed for when one was far away, the thing all about one, the world one actually lived in, was the sky, the sky!"
"Time brings things to pass, certainly. I had no idea you were taking all this so much to heart."
"The beautiful concept of Mary pierced the priest’s heart like a sword."
"Eusabio accepted chance and weather as the country did, with a sort of grave enjoyment."
"The plain was there, under one’s feet, but what one saw when one looked about was that brilliant blue world of stinging air and moving cloud."
"I had rather keep the old adobe church we have now than help to build one of those horrible structures they are putting up in the Ohio cities."
"I would rather have found that hill of yellow rock than have come into a fortune to spend in charity."
"Every time I come here, I like this stone better."
"Even the mountains were mere anthills under it. Elsewhere the sky is the roof of the world; but here the earth was the floor of the sky."
"The Bishop stood in the doorway of his church, lost in thought, looking at the line of black footprints his departing visitor had left in the wet scurf of snow."
"The Bishop heard the old woman’s confession. He blessed her and put both hands upon her head."
"A Navajo hogan, some abjectly poor little huddle of Mexican huts, or a company of Monsignori and Cardinals at Rome—it was all the same."
"Wandering prospectors had found large deposits of gold along Cherry Creek, and the mountains that were solitary a year ago were now full of people."
"The miners lived on half-baked dough and alcohol. They did not even keep the mountain water pure, and so died of fever. All the living conditions were abominable."
"His great diocese, already enlarged by thousands of square miles to the south and west, must now, on the north, take in the still undefined but suddenly important region of the Colorado Rockies."
"But Jean, who was at ease in any society and always the flower of courtesy, could not form new ties."
"It had always been so. He was like that even as a boy; gracious to everyone, but known to a very few."
"The construction of Father Vaillant’s wagon took a month."
"But God had his reasons, Father Joseph devoutly believed."
"The Bishop of Leavenworth begged him to send a priest there as soon as possible—an able one, by all means, not only devoted, but resourceful and intelligent, one who would be at his ease with all sorts of men."
"The Bishop rode home to his solitude. He was forty-seven years old, and he had been a missionary in the New World for twenty years—ten of them in New Mexico."
"The nursery tale could not vie with Her in simplicity, the wisest theologians could not match Her in profundity."
"Wherever he went, he soon made friends that took the place of country and family."
"Manuelito is well; he still leads his people."
"That air would disappear from the whole earth in time, perhaps; but long after his day."
"More and more life seemed to him an experience of the Ego, in no sense the Ego itself."
"He had come back to die in exile for the sake of it. Something soft and wild and free, something that whispered to the ear on the pillow, lightened the heart, softly, softly picked the lock, slid the bolts, and released the prisoned spirit of man into the wind, into the blue and gold, into the morning, into the morning!"