"...churches were...feats of spiritual engineering...they... represented another level of reality, the divine, which was present in the midst of everyday toil, and there stood open to the future, when the kingdom of heaven would be. Established on earth. That no one seeks the divine level of reality any more and that the churches stand empty means that it is no longer necessary. That it is no longer necessary means that the kingdom of heaven has come. There is nothing left to long for other than longing itself, of which the empty churches I can see from here have become the symbol." (38)
Some of that goes a bit too far, but I thought that the way that KOK expressed the essential nature of churches summed up my beliefs nicely: "engineering...they... represented another level of reality, the divine...." That's one of the reasons that the physical appearance of a church matters to me. Old Catholic churches, with their huge stained glass windows, statuary, and sometimes relics suit my idea of the proper way to signal that you have entered the presence of God.
"...the wisest person knows that 'I' is nothing in itself." (133)
"Madame Bovary is the world's greatest novel.... Flaubert's sentences are like a rag rubbed across a window pane encrusted with smoke and dirt which you have long since grown accustomed to seeing the world through." (178 - 179)
I think this would make a great title: "The archaic light of the soul...." (224) Somebody should tell a writer.
And the 🎤 drop: "to gaze into the eyes of the one you love when love is at its most powerful belongs among the highest joys." (224)
This wasn't really a good book. More a series of descriptions, most of them banal and unnecessary--like the description of how a toilet functions, for instance--but occasionally there'd be a flash of inspired stuff, and I don't feel that Autumn was a waste of time. In fact, I'll probably be starting Winter tomorrow.
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