Host Quotes - page 6
What spectator... would not exclaim... that through Fortune the foreign host was prevailing beyond its deserts, but through Virtue the Hellenes were holding out beyond their ability? And if the ones (i. e., the enemy) gains the upper hand, this will be the work of Fortune or of some jealous deity or of divine retribution; but if the others (i. e., the Greeks) prevail, it will be Virtue and daring, friendship and fidelity, that will win the guerdon of victory? These were, in fact, the only support that Alexander had with him at this time, since Fortune had put a barrier between him and the rest of his forces and equipment, fleets, horse, and camp. Finally, the Macedonians routed the barbarians, and, when they had fallen, pulled down their city on their heads.
Plutarch
It is under such cultural circumstances that our contemporaries, systematically cretinised by the mechanicism and the architecture of auto-punition, by psychological bureaucratic congratulations, by ideological disorder and imaginative fasting, by affective paternal hungers of all kinds, seek in vain - to bite into the doting and triumphal sweetness of the plump, atavistic, tender, militarist and territorial hack of some hitlerian nurse, in order at last to be able, no matter how, to communicate with the totemic consecrated host that has just been elevated in front of their own noses and which, as is known and understood, was nothing else than the spiritual and symbolic nourishment that catholicism offered during the centuries to appease the cannibal frenzy of moral and irrational hungers.
Salvador DalĂ
I had never heard a Mass like that one.. the church vault was split open, the walls were rasped and peeling, the altars were wrecked or had been thrown out; worst of all, that great dark hole at the end, where the high altar had been, the paving hidden beneath the powder and rubble, no pews to sit on, everyone standing or kneeling before a wooden table with a crucifix placed on it, a sunbeam shining sharply down through a gap in the vault and a cloud of flies dancing in the harsh light that illuminated the whole Church and made it seem as though we were hearing Mass in the middle of the street. [-] I had never heard a Mass like that one [-] The bread and the Wine appeared as though they were fresh: the Host appeared to be beating and, in the sunlight, when the Wine was poured into the chalice, it appeared to be blood that was flowing [-] and then the thought, the sentiment occurred to me that Mass should always be heard in this way, in fear and trembling.
Joan Maragall