A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not of building bridges, is not Christian. ~ Pope Francis

A wall is a structure that defines an area, carries a load, or provides shelter or security.

Quotes

• The Berlin Wall was not dismantled by rulers and agreements but rather by citizens who felled it with their own hands.
  • Anarchists Against the Wall, 2004 declaration, as reported by Electronic Intifada February 6, 2014

• And I have known the eyes already, known them all—
  The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
  And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
  When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
  Then how should I begin
  To spit our the butt-ends of my days and ways?
  And how should I presume?
  • T. S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1917)

• A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not of building bridges, is not Christian.
  • As quoted in "Pope Francis: Donald Trump 'is not Christian'" (18 February 2016), by Rebecca Kaplan, CBS News.

• Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
  What I was walling in or walling out,
  And to whom I was like to give offence.
  Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
  That wants it down.
  • Robert Frost, Mending Wall (1914)

• There are frequent moments when we feel lower than the lowest of mankind, and this opinion of ourselves isolates us. Hence the rumor that all flesh is base comes almost as a message of hope. It breaks down the wall that has kept us apart, and we feel one with humanity.
  • Eric Hoffer, Reflections on the Human Condition (2006), #127

• But it was only fantasy.
  The wall was too high,
  As you can see.
  No matter how he tried,
  He could not break free.
  And the worms ate into his brain.
  • Pink Floyd, Hey You, written by Roger Waters, from The Wall (1979)

• There is a very small remnant ... of worthy disciples of philosophy. ... Those who belong to this small class have tasted how sweet and blessed a possession philosophy is, and have also seen and been satisfied of the madness of the multitude, and known that there is no one who ever acts honestly in the administration of States, nor any helper who will save any one who maintains the cause of the just. Such a savior would be like a man who has fallen among wild beasts—unable to join in the wickedness of his fellows, neither would he be able alone to resist all their fierce natures, and therefore he would be of no use to the State or to his friends, and would have to throw away his life before he had done any good to himself or others. And he reflects upon all this, and holds his peace, and does his own business. He is like one who retires under the shelter of a wall in the storm of dust and sleet which the driving wind hurries along; and when he sees the rest of mankind full of wickedness, he is content if only he can live his own life and be pure from evil or unrighteousness, and depart in peace and good will, with bright hopes.
  • Plato, The Republic, 496d

• A prison wall was round us both,
  Two outcast men we were:
  The world had thrust us from its heart,
  And God from out His care:
  And the iron gin that waits for Sin
  Had caught us in its snare.
  • Oscar Wilde, Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898)

External links