Fourth Sunday in Easter

‘All marriages – all everythings – tote around contingencies whether we acknowledge them or don’t. In all things good and giddy, there’s always one measly eventuality no one’s thought about, or hasn’t thought about in so long it almost doesn’t exist. Only it does. Which is the one potentially fatal chink in the body armor of intimacy, to the unconditional this ‘n that, to the sacred vows, the pledging of truths, to the forever anythings. And that is: There’s a back door somewhere to every deal, and there a draft can enter.’


- Richard Ford, The Lay of the Land




‘A wise lord cannot and ought not keep faith when such observance may be turned against him, and when the reasons that led him to pledge faith no longer exist…But it is necessary to know well how to disguise this characteristic and to be a great pretender and dissembler.’


- Niccolo Machiavelli




‘Words are for those with promises to keep.’


- W.H. Auden