. . .
Religious quotes, proverbs & summaries
. . . .
– Smith Wigglesworth —
You will find that God is always more willing to work than we are to
give Him an opportunity to work.
Begin in faith... and it will be revealed what will happen.
I would rather have the Spirit of God on me for five minutes than
to receive a million dollars.
– AA Milne —
Possibly... probably....
– Merlin Carothers —
Rejoice! Thank God for everything!
For a Christian, the way to be lifted up on top of a problem
is to submit to it... Submission releases God's authority to overcome
the situation... You wouldn't complain if you really thought God was
in charge and doing what is best for you... When you complain you succumb.
– Rodan of Alexandria —
Only a brave person will honestly admit, and fearlessly face,
what a sincere and logical mind discovers.
Never continue in a job you don't enjoy. If you're happy in what
you're doing, you'll like yourself, you'll have inner peace.
– Robert J. Sawyer (1960-), 'Calculating God', 2000 —
How do you define God? Like this. A God I could understand, at least potentially, was infinitely more interesting and relevant than one that defied comprehension.
– Bob Dylan —
Jesus tapped me on the shoulder and said, Bob, why are you resisting me?
I said, I'm not resisting you! He said, You gonna follow me?
I said, I've never thought about that before!
He said, When you're not following me, you're resisting me.
I think of a hero as someone who understands the degree of responsibility
that comes with his freedom.
– Winston Churchill (1874-1965) —
The price of greatness is responsibility.
For myself I am an optimist
- it does not seem to be much use being anything else.
Let our advance worrying become advance thinking and planning.
– John Newton —
By one hour's intimate access to the throne of grace,
where the Lord causes His glory to pass before the soul that seeks Him
you may acquire more true spiritual knowledge and comfort
than by a day's or a week's converse with the best of men...
'What Thou wilt, when Thou wilt, how Thou wilt.' I had rather speak
these three sentences from my heart in my mother tongue
than be master of all the languages in Europe.
– Carl Jung —
Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart.
Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.
Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to
an understanding of ourselves.
– Brother Lawrence (Nicholas Herman, c. 1605-1691) —
God loves us infinitely more than we imagine.
Adore God incessantly.
God, regards not the greatness of the work,
but the love with which it is performed.
We ought to love our friends, but without encroaching upon the love of God,
which must be the principal.
We must not try to go faster than grace. One does not become
holy all at once.
Get a habit of entertaining yourself often with God,
and forget Him the least you can.
We must know before we can love. In order to know God,
we must often think of Him; and when we come to love Him,
we shall then also think of Him often,
for our heart will be with our treasure.
Make a virtue of necessity. [All necessity results from God's virtue.]
He never forsakes us, till we have first forsaken Him.
Let us fear to leave Him.
Hold yourself in prayer before God, like a dumb or paralytic beggar
at a rich man's gate.
Are we not rude and deserve blame, if we leave Him alone,
to busy ourselves about trifles...
'Tis to be feared these trifles will one day cost us dear.
The sorest afflictions never appear intolerable,
but when we see them in the wrong light.
When we see them in the hand of God, Who dispenses them:
when we know that it is our loving Father,
Who abases and distresses us: our sufferings will lose their bitterness,
and become even matter of consolation.
Put then all your trust in Him, and you will soon find the effects
of it in your recovery, which we often retard,
by putting greater confidence in medicine than in God...
He often sends diseases of the body, to cure those of the soul.
– Leonard Ravenhill - Epitaph —
Is what you're living for worth Christ dying for?
– Malcolm Muggeridge —
I became aware of the intrinsic absurdity of the human ego in all its postures.
– Persian Proverb —
Epigrams succeed where epics fail.
– Scripture —
In everything be giving thanks... (CLV 1Th 5:18)
Be testing all - hold onto the ideal. (1Th 5:21)
The Lord operates all things according to the counsel of His will. (Eph 1:11)
Every joy consider it when you fall into various trials of your faith...
[since] they lead to perfection. (Jam 1:2)
Be rejoicing in the Lord always! (CLV Php 4:4)
Now we are aware that God is working all together for the good
of those who are loving God. (CLV Rom 8:28)
To whom there is scant pardoning, there is scant loving. (CLV Lk 7:47)
'Lift My yoke upon you and be learning from Me, for meek am I and humble
in heart, and you shall be finding rest in your souls,
for My yoke is kindly and My load is light.' (CLV Mt 11:29-30)
In all these [troubles] we are more than conquering through Him
Who loves us. (CLV Rom 8:37)
Happy are those lamenting now, for you shall be laughing...
Woe to you who are laughing now,
for you shall be mourning and lamenting! (CLV Lk 6:21,25)
Bear one another's burdens, and thus fill up the law of Christ. (CLV Gal 6:2)
Be rejoicing with those rejoicing, lamenting with those lamenting. (CLV Rom 12:15)
Be mindful of those bound, as bound together with them; of those
maltreated, as being yourselves also in the body. (CLV Heb 13:3)
Now this I am averring, brethren, the era is limited; that,
furthermore, those also having wives may be as not having them,
and those lamenting as not lamenting and those rejoicing as not rejoicing,
and those buying as not retaining, and those using this world as not using
it up. For the fashion of this world is passing by. (CLV 1Cor 7:29-31)
Many of the first shall be last, and the last first. (CLV Mt 19:30)
He who is faithful in the least is faithful in much also,
and he who is unjust in the least is unjust in much also. (CLV Lk 16:10)
Do not withhold good from one petitioning it,
When it is at the disposal of your hands to act. (CLV Pr 3:27)
Now to everyone to whom much was given,
from him much will be sought, and to whom they committed much,
more excessively will they be requesting of him. (CLV Lk 12:48)
Now in a great house there are not only golden and silver utensils,
but wooden and earthenware also, and some indeed for honor,
yet some for dishonor. If, then, anyone should ever be purging himself
from these, he will be a utensil for honor, hallowed,
and useful to the Owner, made ready for every good act. (CLV 2Tim 2:20-21)
Extract first the beam out of your eye, and then you will be keen-sighted
to be extracting the mote out of your brother's eye. (CLV Mt 7:5)
Suffice with what is present. (CLV Heb 13:5)
The anointing which you obtained from Him is remaining in you, and you have
not need that anyone may be teaching you, but as His anointing is teaching
you concerning all, and is true, and is not a lie, according as it teaches
you also, remain in Him. (CLV 1Jn 2:27)
– Voltaire (1694-1778) —
God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.
Love is a canvas furnished by nature and embroidered by imagination.
The safest course is to do nothing against one's conscience.
With this secret, we can enjoy life and have no fear from death.
It is better to risk saving a guilty man than to condemn an innocent one.
Madness is to think of too many things in succession too fast,
or of one thing too exclusively.
– A.A. Allen —
Before one can walk as Christ walked, and talk as He talked,
he must first begin to think as Christ thought.
– John Henry Newman —
To holy people the very name of Jesus is a name to feed upon,
a name to transport. His name can raise the dead and transfigure
and beautify the living.
– Billy Graham —
Suppose someone should offer me a plateful of crumbs after
I had eaten a T-bone steak. I would say, 'No, thank you.
I am already satisfied.' Christian, that is the secret - you
can be so filled with the things of Christ, so enamoured with the things
of God that you do not have time for the sinful pleasures of the world.
– Anonymous —
Now that we've found love what are we going to do with it?
Run with the gifts that you have.
It will all be worth it in the end.
What is good can be the enemy of what is best.
The best way to find good in yourself is to begin to look for good in others.
A good leader knows the way, shows the way, and goes the way.
Love will find a way. Indifference will find an excuse.
There are three sides to every story; the good side,
their side and your side.
Sometimes you have to watch somebody love something
before you can love it yourself. It's as if they are showing you the way.
That's what the body of Christ should be on earth.
Everyone hears what you say. Friends listen to what you say.
Best friends listen to what you don't say.
From the cowardice that shrinks from new truth; from the laziness
that is content with half-truths; from the arrogance that thinks
it knows all truth - oh God of Truth deliver us!
Humility is not thinking less of yourself but thinking of yourself less.
A wise man can see more from the bottom of a well
than a fool can from a mountain top.
The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes,
but in having new eyes.
Those who dance may be thought mad by those who don't hear the music...
Marriage is a calling from which some are spared.
Just because God is working through us
does not mean that we are right with God.
Our problems are opportunities to discover God's solutions.
Always following the easiest route makes men and rivers 'crooked'.
– Emmet Fox —
If only you could love enough, you could be the happiest and
most powerful being in the world.
– Clive Staples Lewis —
When we are such as we can love without impediment,
we shall in fact be happy.
The worldly man treats certain people kindly because he 'likes' them:
the Christian, trying to treat everyone kindly,
finds himself liking more and more people as he goes on
- including people he could not even have imagined himself liking
at the beginning.
If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy,
the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.
We are what we believe we are.
[Consciousness] is either inexplicable illusion, or else revelation.
Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it.
I believe in God as I believe that the sun has risen, not only because I see
it, but because by it I see everything else.
My own idea, for what it is worth, is that all sadness which is not
now either arising from the repentance of a concrete sin and
hastening towards concrete amendment or restitution,
or else arising from pity and hastening towards active assistance,
is simply bad.
Mercy, detached from justice, grows unmerciful.
– Erich Fromm —
Immature love says, 'I love you because I need you.'
Mature love says, 'I need you because I love you.'
– Virgil (70BC-19BC) —
Love conquers all.
They can conquer who believe they can.
Fortune favors the brave. (Aeneid)
– Lao Tzu —
To love someone deeply gives you strength.
Being loved by someone deeply gives you courage.
– W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) —
The important thing was to love rather than to be loved.
– Kierkegaard - Danish existentialist Christian philosopher —
When one has once fully entered the realm of love, the world
- no matter how imperfect - becomes rich and beautiful,
it consists solely of opportunities for love.
Prayer does not change God, it changes Him who prays.
– Sir James M. Barrie —
If you have love, you don't need to have anything else,
and if you don't have it, it doesn't matter much what else you have.
– Mother Teresa (1910-1997) —
It is not how much you do, but how much love you put into the doing
that matters.
Joy is prayer - joy is strength - joy is love
- joy is a net of love by which you can catch souls.
– Saint Bernard of Clairvaux —
We find rest in those we love, and we provide a resting place
in ourselves for those who love us.
– Gracie Allen —
Never place a period where God has placed a comma.
– Jessica - age 8 —
You really shouldn't say 'I love you' unless you mean it.
But if you mean it, you should say it a lot. People forget.
– Rev. Martin Luther King —
Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into friend.
A time comes when silence is betrayal.
– Amy Carmichael —
You can give without loving. But you cannot love without giving.
– Walt Whitman —
I see that there is no such thing as love unreturned.
The pay is certain, one way or another.
– Fr. Richard P. McBrien —
[Love] must be at the heart of every other Christian virtue.
Thus, for example, justice without love is legalism;
faith without love is ideology; hope without love is self-centeredness;
forgiveness without love is self-abasement;
fortitude without love is recklessness;
generosity without love is extravagance;
care without love is mere duty; fidelity without love is servitude.
Every virtue is an expression of love.
No virtue is really a virtue unless it is permeated,
or informed, by love.
– James A. Baldwin - Biography, fiction writer, essayist, social critic (1924-1987) —
Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.
Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without
and know we cannot live within.
Anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after
that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster.
– Jimi Hendrix —
When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace.
– Kahlil Gibran —
Your living is determined not so much by what life brings to you as
by the attitude you bring to life; not so much by what happens to you as
by the way your mind looks at what happens.
How else can it be?
- The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy
you can contain.
When love beckons you, follow him,
...And when his wings enfold you yield to him,
Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.
And when he speaks to you believe him,
Though his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste
a garden.
For even as love crowns you so he shall crucify you. Even as he is for
your growth so is he for your pruning.
Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that
quiver in the sun,
So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging
to the earth.
Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself.
He threshes you to make you naked.
He sifts you to free you from your husks.
He grinds you to whiteness.
He kneads you until you are pliant;
And then he assigns you to his sacred fire, that you may become
sacred bread for God's sacred feast.
All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets
of your heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life's heart.
But if in your fear you would seek only love's peace and love's
pleasure,
Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out
of love's threshing-floor...
Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.
Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may
stand in the sun, so you must know pain.
And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles
of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy;
And you would accept the seasons of your heart, even as you
have always accepted the seasons that pass over your fields.
And you would watch with serenity through the winters of your grief.
Much of your pain is self-chosen. It is the bitter potion by which
the physician within you heals your sick self.
Therefore trust the physician, and drink his remedy...
For his hand - though heavy and hard, is guided by the tender hand
of the Unseen.
And the cup he brings, though it burn your lips, has been fashioned
of the clay which the Potter has moistened with His own sacred tears.
Love gives naught but itself.
And think not that you can direct the course of love, for love, if it
finds you worthy, directs your course.
[Love desires] to wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for
another day of loving;
To rest at noon hour and meditate love's ecstacy;
To return home at eventide with gratitude;
And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart
and a song of praise upon your lips.
Your children... are sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you.
You give but little when you give of your possessions.
It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.
There are those who give little of the much which they have - and they give
it for recognition and their hidden desire makes their gifts unwholesome.
And there are those who give little and give it all.
These are the believers in life and the bounty of life,
and their coffer is never empty.
There are those who give with joy, and that joy is their reward.
...Through the hands of such as these God speaks, and from behind their
eyes He smiles upon the earth.
You often say, 'I would give, but only to the deserving.'
The trees in your orchard say not so, nor the flocks in your pasture.
They give that they may live, for to withhold is to perish.
...And he who has deserved to drink from the ocean of life deserves
to fill his cup from your little stream.
...See first that you deserve to be a giver, and an instrument
of giving.
For in truth it is life that gives unto life - while you, who deem
yourself a giver, are but a witness.
...and you are all receivers...
...rise together with the giver on his gifts as on wings...
When you kill a beast say to him in your heart:
'By the same power that slays you, I too am slain; and I too shall
be consumed.
'For the law that delivered you into my hand shall deliver me
into a mightier hand.
Your blood and my blood is naught but the sap that feeds the tree
of heaven.'
...And in the autumn, when you gather the grapes of your vineyards
fo the winepress, say in your heart:
'I too am a vineyard, and my fruit shall be gathered for the winepress,
And like new wine I shall be kept in eternal vessels.'
And in winter, when you draw the wine, let there be in your heart
a song for each cup;
And let there be in the song a rememberance for the autumn days,
and for the vineyard, and for the winepress.
You work that you may keep pace with the earth and the soul of the earth.
For to be idle is to become a stranger unto the seasons, and to
step out of life's procession...
...When you work you are a flute through whose heart the
whispering of the hours turns to music.
...And in keeping yourself with labour you are in truth loving life,
And to love life through labour is to be intimate with life's
inmost secret.
All urge is blind save when there is knowledge.
And all knowledge is vain save when there is work,
And all work is empty save when there is love;
And when you work with love you bind yourself to yourself,
and to one another, and to God.
...It is to weave the cloth with threads drawn from your heart,
even as if your beloved were to wear that cloth.
It is to build a house with affection, even as if your beloved were
to dwell in that house.
It is to sow seeds with tenderness and reap the harvest with joy,
even as if you beloved were to eat the fruit.
It is to charge all things you fashion with a breath of your own spirit,
And to know that all the blessed dead are ...about you and watching.
Often I have heard you say, as if speaking in sleep, 'He who works in marble,
and finds the shape of his own soul in the stone, nobler than he who ploughs
the soil.
'And he who seizes the rainbow to lay it on a cloth in the likeness
of man, is more than he who makes the sandals for our feet.'
But I say, not in sleep, but in the over-wakefulness of noontide,
that the wind speaks not more sweetly to the giant oaks than to the least
of all the blades of grass;
And he alone is great who turns the voice of the wind into a song
made sweeter by his own loving.
If you bake bread with indifference, you bake a bitter bread that
feeds but half man's hunger.
And if you grudge the crushing of the grapes, your grudge distils
a poison in the wine.
And if you sing though as angels, and love not the singing,
you muffle men's ears to the voices of the day and the voices of the night.
Your god-self dwells not alone in your being.
Much in you is still man, and much in you is not yet man,
But a shapeless pigmy that walks asleep in the mist searching for its
own awakening.
And you judges who would be just,
What judgement pronounce you upon him who though honest in the flesh
yet is a thief in the spirit?
What penalty lay you upon him who slays in the spirit yet is himself
slain in the spirit?
...And how shall you punish those whose remorse is already greater
than their misdeeds?
Is not remorse the justice that is administered by that very law
which you would fain serve?
Yet you cannot lay remorse upon the innocent nor lift it from
the heart of the guilty.
Unbidden shall it call in the night, that men may wake and gaze
upon themselves.
And you who would understand justice, how shall you unless you look
upon all deeds in the fullness of light?
When [your friend] is silent your heart ceases not to listen to his heart.
...When you part from your friend, you grieve not;
For that which you love most in him may be clearer in his absence,
as the mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain.
When you meet your friend on the roadside or in the marketplace...
...Let the voice within your voice speak to the ear of his ear.
For his soul will keep the truth of your heart as the taste of the
wine is remembered.
When the colour is forgotten and the vessel is no more.
In much of your talking, thinking is half murdered.
And there are those who talk, and without knowledge or forethought
reveal a truth which they themselves do not understand.
And there are those who have the truth within them, but they tell
it not in words.
You pray in your distress and in your need; would that you might pray
also in the fullness of your joy and in the days of your abundance.
For what is prayer but the expansion of yourself into the living ether?
And if it is for your comfort to pour forth your longings into space,
it is also for you delight to pour forth the dawnings of your heart.
When you pray you rise to meet in the air those who are praying at that
very hour, and whom save in prayer you may not meet.
...If you should enter [that] temple for no other purpose than
asking you shall not receive...
Your daily life is your temple and your religion.
Whenever you enter into it take with you your all.
You are not enclosed within your bodies, nor confined to houses or fields.
That which is you dwells above the mountain and roves with the wind.
It was but yesterday we met in a dream.
You have sung to me in my aloneness, and I of your longings have built
a tower in the sky.
...If in the twilight of memory we should meet once more,
we shall speak again together and you shall sing to me a deeper song.
And if our hands should meet in another dream we shall build
another tower in the sky.
A little while and my longing shall gather dust and foam for another body.
A little while, a moment of rest upon the wind, and another woman
shall bear me.
The man who is moderate in his faith is the same as the man who is torn
by his fear of being punished and his [selfish] desire of being rewarded.
The sympathy which lightly touches the heart of your neighbour
is more essential than the virtue that is hidden in the invisible
recesses of a convent. A word of compassion addressed to a criminal
or prostitute is more noble than the long and meaningless prayers
that we repeat each day in the temples.
The riches of the mind embellish the face of a man and earn sympathy and
respect. The mind of a being is reflected in the eyes and in all the
movements and gestures of his body.
How could you grasp the truth of all things while you keep your eyes
on the navel of their happy medium? Would all things have neither
tail nor head?
– Gilbert K. Chesterton —
The critical thing is whether you take things
for granted or take them with gratitude.
People generally quarrel because they cannot argue.
Half a truth is better than no politics.
The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth,
is to shut it again on something (solid).
It isn't that they can't see the solution.
It is that they can't see the problem.
– George Gordon, Lord Byron, English Poet (1788-1824) —
All who joy would win must share it - happiness was born a twin.
– William Butler Yeats, Irish poet and playwright (1865-1939) —
We are happy when for every [good] thing inside us there is a corresponding
something outside us.
– Epictetus (c.55-c.135) —
There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about
things which are beyond the power of our will.
– Nicole Kidman, in The Scotsman —
When you relinquish the desire to control your future,
you can have more happiness.
– Martha Washington —
The greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions,
and not on our circumstances. We carry the seeds of
the one or the other about with us in our minds wherever we go.
– Hyman Judah Schachtel, Jewish American writer (1907-1990) —
Happiness is not having what you want,
but wanting what you have.
– Samuel Johnston —
True happiness consists not in the multitude of friends,
but in their worth and choice.
– J. D. Salinger (1919-) —
I am a kind of paranoiac in reverse.
I suspect people of plotting to make me happy.
– Thomas Traherne (1636-1674) —
Happiness was not made to be boasted, but enjoyed.
Therefore, though others count me miserable, I will not believe
them if I know and feel myself to be happy...
– Louise Bogan —
I cannot believe that the inscrutable universe turns on an axis of suffering;
surely the strange beauty of the world must somewhere rest on pure joy!
– Pearl Buck (1892-1973) —
There is an alchemy in sorrow. It can be transmuted into wisdom,
which, if it does not bring joy, can yet bring happiness.
– William Shakespeare (1564-1616) —
Things won are done; joy's soul lies in the doing.
– Sarah Ban Breathnach —
Learning to live in the present moment is part of the path of joy.
– Hung Tzu-ch'eng, Chineze Zen Buddhist monk (c.1600) —
Warm weather fosters growth; cold weather destroys it. Thus a man with an
unsympathetic temperament has scant joy; but a man with a warm and
friendly heart has overflowing blessings, and his beneficience will
extend to posterity.
– Fritz Williams —
Suffering and joy teach us, if we allow them,
how to make the leap of empathy, which transports us
into the soul and heart of another person.
In those transparent moments we know other people's joys and sorrows,
and we care about their concerns as if they were our own.
– James Boswell, Scottish lawyer and biographer (1740-1795) —
As in filling a vessel drop by drop, there is at last a drop
which makes it run over; so in a series of kindnesses there is
at last one which makes the heart run over.
– Michel de Montaigne, French essayist (1533-1592) —
The most evident token and apparent sign of true wisdom
is a constant and unconstrained rejoicing.
– Charles G. Finney (1792-1875) —
A state of mind that sees God in everything is evidence of
growth in grace and a thankful heart.
– Estonian Proverb —
Who does not thank for little will not thank for much.
– Chinese Proverb —
When eating bamboo sprouts, remember the man who planted them.
– Robert Quillen —
If you count all your assets, you always show a profit.
– Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) —
Content makes poor men rich; discontent makes rich men poor.
Do good to your friends to keep them, to your enemies to win them.
By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.
When in doubt, don't.
– Thomas a'Kempis —
No creature is so little or so mean as not to show forth and
represent the goodness of God.
– William Dalton, 'Salvation and Damnation' —
If God loves all and is omnipotent then all must be saved.
Nels Ferré: 'If he can save all men, then he will save all men.'
– Miroslav Volf —
The goal of pursuit of justice must not simply be that justice happens
but that reconciliation also happens.
– Peter Chrysologus, 435 —
In the world to come, those who have done evil all their life long,
will be made worthy of the sweetness of the Divine bounty.
For never would Christ have said, 'You will never get out
until you have paid the last penny' unless it were possible for us
to get cleansed when we paid the debt.
– Diodore of Tarsus (320-394) —
For the wicked there are punishments, not perpetural, however,
lest the immortality prepared for them should be a disadvantage,
but they are to be purified for a brief period according to
the amount of malice in their works.
They shall therefore suffer punishment for a short space,
but immortal blessedness having no end awaits them...
the penalties to be inflicted for their many and grave sins
are very far surpassed by the magnitude of the mercy to be showed to them.
– Theodoret the Blessed (387-458) —
In the present life God is in all, for His nature is without limits,
but He is not all in all. But in the coming life,
when mortality is at an end and immortality granted,
and sin has no longer any place, God will be all in all.
For the Lord, who loves man, punishes medicinally,
that He may check the course of impiety.
– George MacDonald —
The whole trouble is that we won't let God help us.
Every truth must be accompanied by some corresponding act.
[God says-] 'Look, my children, you will never be strong
but with my strength. I have no other to give you.
And that you can get only by trusting in me.
I can not give it you any other way. There is no other way.'
JUSTICE REQUIRES that sin should be put an end to.
The man that feareth, Lord, to doubt,
In that fear doubteth thee.
Man finds it hard to get what he wants,
because he does not want the best...
God finds it hard to give,
because He would give the best [currently possible],
and man will not take it.
I find that doing of the will of God leaves me no time for disputing
about His plans.
Anything large enough for a wish to light upon,
is large enough to hang a prayer upon.
We die daily. Happy are those who daily come to life as well.
[God] regards men not as they are merely, but as they shall be;
not as they shall be merely, but as they are now growing,
or capable of growing, towards that image after which He made them
that they might grow to it.
Therefore a thousand stages, each in itself all but valueless,
are of inestimable worth as the necessary and connected gradations
of an infinite progress...
Primarily, God is not bound to punish sin; he is bound to destroy sin.
The only vengeance worth having on sin is to make the sinner himself
its executioner.
– Watchman Nee, 'God's Plan and the Overcomers' —
The aim of redemption is to let Christ have the pre-eminence in all things.
In order to have this first place in all things,
Christ must first have the pre-eminence in us. And why?
Because we are the firstfruits of all creation (James 1:18).
After we are in subjection to Christ,
all other things will follow in subjection...
– Charles P. Schmitt, 'The Unending Triumph of Jesus Christ' —
It becomes morally impossible for all things to be both subject
to Jesus Christ and yet sinfully rebellious against Him at the same time!
– Paul Seigvolck, The Everlasting Gospel, 1753 —
If but one soul were to remain in the power of the devil, death,
or hell, to all endless eternity, then the devil, death,
and hell would have something to boast of against God.
Thus death would not be entirely swallowed up in victory,
but always keep something of his sting,
and hell would ever more be able to make a scorn of those who would say,
'O hell, where is, your victory?'
– Frances of Assisi —
[Consider in relation to the belief or denial of universal salvation...]
If you have men who will exclude any of God's creatures from the
shelter of [God's] compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal
likewise with their fellow man.
– Julian of Norwich (c.1342-c.1413) —
Rightfulness hath two fair properties: it is right and it is full...
Rightfulness is that thing that is so good that
[it] may not be better than it is.
All that is good our Lord doeth, and that which is evil our Lord suffereth.
I shall make well all that is not well.
When I saw that God doeth all that is done, I saw no sin:
and then I saw that all IS well.
But when God shewed me for sin, then said He: All SHALL be well.
For this is the Great Deed that our Lord shall do,
in which Deed He shall save His word and He shall make all well
that is not well. How it shall be done there is no creature
beneath Christ that knoweth it... according to the understanding that
I took of our Lord's meaning in this time.
He that made all things for love, by the same love keepeth them,
and shall keep them without end.
Also in this He shewed me a little thing, the quantity of an hazel-nut,
in the palm of my hand...
In this Little Thing I saw three properties.
The first is that God made it, the second is that God loveth it,
the third, that God keepeth it.
I learned that it is more worship to God to know all-thing in general,
than to take pleasure in any special thing...
for by the same blessed Might, Wisdom, and Love, that He made all-thing,
to the same end our good Lord leadeth it continually,
and thereto Himself shall bring it; and when it is time we shall see it.
It is the most worship that a solemn King or a great Lord
may do a poor servant if he will be homely with him,
and specially if he sheweth it himself, of a full true meaning,
and with a glad cheer, both privately and in company.
For we are now so blind and unwise that we never seek God
till He of His goodness shew Himself to us.
And when we aught see of Him graciously, then are we stirred by
the same grace to seek with great desire to see Him more blissfully.
And thus I saw Him, and sought Him; and I had Him, I wanted Him.
God, of Thy Goodness, give me Thyself; - only in Thee I have all.
Then he [Satan] shall see that all the woe and tribulation that he hath
done to them shall be turned to increase of their joy, without end.
And in this I saw verily that the inward part is master and sovereign
to the outward... That the outward part should draw the inward
to assent was not shewed to me; but that the inward draweth
the outward by grace, and both shall be oned in bliss without end,
by the virtue of Christ.
For as much as He [Christ] was most tender and pure,
right so He was most strong and mighty to suffer...
And for every man's sin that shall be saved He suffered:
and every man's sorrow and desolation He saw,
and sorrowed for kindness and love.
He will of His goodness make us the higher with Him in His bliss;
and for this little pain that we suffer here,
we shall have an high endless knowing in God which we could
never have without that.
Ah! good Lord, how might all be well, for the great hurt that is come,
by sin, to the creature?... He taught that I should behold
the glorious Satisfaction: for this Amends-making is more pleasing to
God and more worshipful, without comparison, than ever was the sin of
Adam harmful.
[Christ has a longing to have us] - The same desire and thirst that
He had upon the Cross the same hath He yet, and shall [have] unto
the time that the last soul that shall be saved is come up to His bliss.
And Mercy is a working that cometh of the goodness of God,
and it shall last in working all along, as sin is suffered to pursue
rightful souls. And when sin hath no longer leave to pursue,
then shall the working of mercy cease, and then shall all be brought to
rightfulness and therein stand without end. And by His sufferance we fall;
and in His blissful Love with His Might and His Wisdom we are kept;
and by mercy and grace we are raised to manifold more joys.
Right as diverse sins are punished with diverse pains according as they be
grievous, right so shall they be rewarded with diverse joys in Heaven
according as they have been painful and sorrowful to the soul in earth...
God brought merrily to my mind David, and others in the Old Law without
number; and in the New Law He brought to my mind first Mary Magdalene,
Peter and Paul, and those of Inde; and Saint John of Beverley,
and others also without number: how they are known in the Church in earth
with their sins, and it is to them no shame, but all is turned for them
to worship. And therefore our courteous Lord sheweth [it thus] for
them here in part like as it is there in fulness: for
there the token of sin is turned to worship...
And Saint John of Beverley... God hath given him in Heaven manifold joys,
overpassing that [which] he should have had if he had not fallen...
And so on the contrary-wise, as we be punished here with sorrow and penance,
we shall be rewarded in heaven by the courteous love of our
Lord God Almighty... And so shall shame be turned to worship and more joy.
I am sure that no man asketh mercy and grace with true meaning,
but if mercy and grace be first given to him.
...Then we see not, for the time, what we should more pray,
but all our intent with all our might is set wholly to the beholding of Him.
And this is an high unperceivable prayer, as to my sight: for all
the cause wherefor we pray it, it is oned into the sight and beholding of
Him to whom we pray; marvellously enjoying with reverent dread,
and with so great sweetness and delight in Him that we can pray right
nought but as He stirreth us, for the time.
For grace worketh our dreadful failing into plenteous, endless solace;
and grace worketh our shameful falling into high, worshipful rising;
and grace worketh our sorrowful dying into holy, blissful life...
that when we come up and receive the sweet reward which
grace hath wrought for us, then we shall thank and bless our Lord,
endlessly rejoicing that ever we suffered woe.
And that shall be for a property of blessed love that we shall know in
God which we could never have known without woe going before.
For ere that He made us He loved us, and when we were made we loved Him.
There is no dread that fully pleaseth God in us but reverent dread.
And that is full soft, for the more it is had, the less it is felt
for sweetness of love.
In this [fulfilling] we shall see verily the cause of all things that
He hath done; and evermore we shall see the cause of all things that
He hath suffered. And the bliss and the fulfilling shall be so deep
and so high that, for wonder and marvel, all creatures shall have to
God so great reverent dread, overpassing that which hath been seen
and felt before, that the pillars of heaven shall tremble and quake.
But this manner of trembling and dread shall have no pain;
but it belongeth to the worthy might of God thus to be beholden
by His creatures, in great dread trembling and quaking for meekness of joy...
Wherefore God willeth - and also it belongeth to us,
both in nature and grace - that we wit and know of this,
desiring this sight and this working; for it leadeth us in right way,
and keepeth us in true life, and oneth us to God.
And as good as God is, so great He is; and as much as it belongeth
to His goodness to be loved, so much it belongeth to His greatness
to be dreaded. For this reverent dread is the fair courtesy that is in
Heaven afore God's face. And as much as He shall then be known and loved
overpassing that He is now, in so much He shall be dreaded overpassing
that He is now.
It is a lovely meekness of a sinful soul, wrought by mercy and grace
of the Holy Spirit, when we willingly and gladly take the scourge
and chastening of our Lord that Himself will give us.
– Tim Paul O'Connor —
Love said fair, Fair said LOVE.
Our ideality may exceed the limits of our awareness.
Life involves a wild tango between purpose and accident, duty and scruples,
within the variagation of the collective consciousness.
We will all experience Iyehuweh's happy destiny.
Entertainment is stronger than boredom.
Anything you can accept in a loving way is yours.
Anything you can truly hope for - you deserve...
Yet goodness, expecation, belief and worthiness is a free gift.
Nirvana: experiencing infinite goodness, faith and/or expectation
- causality winning for all..
Transcendental mindfulness: experience of
adding sufficient happiness to infinitely cancel out finite suffering.
Sublime mindfulness: expectation that finite suffering will become
infinite happiness.
Blissful mindfulness: finding that infinite happiness cancels out our finite
sufferings
Until you have mustered the willingness to give whatever you have
- it is never fully yours
- you are still lacking the ability to use the full potential of that thing.
We might check the relevance of each thought and feeling to know
how much attention to give to our experiences...
Persuasion is added to your argument as you pay more attention to
the good sense in the other's communication rather than the bad pessimism...
We may be able to be most successfully assertive by considering,
watching and listening rather than speaking - and then vice versa of course.
A man who uprightly supports his neighbour's freedoms may learn more
in receiving a pair of socks than some religious leaders can learn by
expressing their full affections to their friends.
Some things could not ever conceivably be found by anyone unless
we are each - for some time, deprived of them and forced to seek them out.
The empty hunger is re-created into the experience of something more
excellent than could be experienced by finding what we didn't regret losing.
If God creates sin in His creatures He does not sin by creating sin
- as He has no conceivable alternative way to make our happiness
abound to full measure
except by bringing temporary suffering to us all.
God is saying to everyone 'Let Me entertain you!'.
Religion's meaning is to love - love's purpose is to entertain.
God will make us fully happy in all our experiences.
God is happy-sad, lovingly happy to be temporarily sad.
God IS good and only allows evil because He can create out of it
a greater happier kind of good. Its all gonna be made infinitely
much more than worthwhile...
Ultimately, overall, it's all for the best
- each one's sufferings bring them their best possible future!
God will eventually save all of us from sin and suffering and share
His happiest experience of eternity with everyone...
We are all destined to be fully happy and equally enriched...
We all evolve to perfectly love and experience Iyehuweh, the Creator
and Operator of all, Whose name is Love.
God has more love for those people which His love has forced
to be more willing to love. Eventually, all come to be
fully loving so that they are fully loveable, and therefore all come
to be equally loved.
Wherever sin abounds in a creature,
there God's generosity will superabound (Rom 5:20).
The maximum possible infinitely intense equivalence of the importance
of all beings throughout eternity is made possible by loving happiness
infinitely cancelling out finite suffering..
The greatest appreciation for happiness is that success is the greater
because of the failures, the second greatest appreciation
is the experience of pure success, and the third is appreciation
for the temporary failures themselves....
Without the creation of opposing wills in existence and sinful failures
- we could never happily experience our failures along with our successful
endeavours... Our various forms of love each combine with our
sin and sufferings to transubstantiate them into the best possible
happinessess which replace all the temporary sufferings of love and sin.
And so the temporary existence of lost happiness and suffering are both
theoretically absolutely necessary to allow and cause the fully maximised
experience of thankfulness, happiness, pleasure, love and grace in eternity
and the maximised forgetting of all unthankfulness, sadness and pain...
The chief meaning of all God's creating, ordering and evolving activity
is to combine His loving happinesses and sufferings with His creature's sinful
happinesses and sufferings to synthesize the best maximum possible
equivalence of intensity of all existent loving happinesses.
And so, the chief purpose of life, the universe and everything is that
God and His creatures come to experience the maximum loving intensity
of happiness forever and forever travel through the maximum diversity
of equivalently important happy experiences.
The exact way that we choose to do righteousness or sin always provides
us with the very best possible situation in the universe from which to learn
to love more ideally. So, from the eternal viewpoint, our exact circumstances
always suit us in precisely the most ideal way possible - in order to
synthesise in the best possible way the maximised equivalence of all
loving happiness.
Our circumstances are always an ideal resolution, opportunity, challenge
and channel for us.
Overall in the times of sin and suffering - we each end up sinning against
our conscience, our moral consciousness to an equivalent degree.
Often experiences of darkness in these times causes sin.
The darkness is the intangible opacity - the empty blindnesses.
Consciousness of sin is the experience of any substance
with some accompanying resistance against the process of equivalating
all our importances - which is the prevailing drive of God's ideal will
to make us all equivalently important in everyway.
God's happinesses comprise His will to love.
Love is happily sharing your happiness about what is good,
and your suffering of what is bad,
with all others
- by various attentions, decisions and efforts...
It is God's thankful, joyful, glad, gleeful, delighting, peaceful,
cheerful, merry, serene, satisfied happiness which loves and appreciates us.
Every expression of our love is willed by some aspect of our happiness...
Out of happinesses come choices,
and out of choices come abilities.
In the long run we should all be infinitely optimistic,
but in the short term we should retain some finite pessimism.
If your happiness is justly loving and honest
it may know how to be sad also.
The greatest appreciation for happiness is that success is the greater
because of the failures, the second greatest appreciation is the experience
of pure success, and the third is appreciation for the temporary failures
themselves....
As far as our eternal happiness is concerned we all win first prize.
As regards our eternal rank - each one's path differs in nature
from everyone else's - yet we all become equivalently
enriched and all views of types of ranking
can come to be viewed as equivalently significant.
God is a realist idealist - anything less than ideal may cause Her suffering.
Yet God is happy about all things - and then eternally happy and loving.
Loving happiness or suffering is the revelation and the mystery,
the answer and a question. While we are in periods of unknowing
our love may be more of a mystery than a revelation,
or more a question than an answer...
Try or try not - God determines what we do.
God's fair and blameless love is always fully willing to give
with all of its ability - using fully diligent apportioning,
prudent timing and proper positioning.
We should employ good measure, good timing and good method.
The happiness and loving assistance of God are always free for the taking...
What prevents us taking it is our unwillingness to do.
This reluctance is determined by God along with everything else.
God's love is an eager dance between the maximum permitted emptiness
and all the various degrees of fullness of experience.
God may consider us as more important than Herself, yet She knows that
She is the most important consideration in that She does this most
contentedly and fairly and reliably... Her happiest appreciations that
are most important to us but second to this are Her happy sufferings.
God's humour and Her seriousness are present in every word of the
double-edged sword in Her mouth. The humour of those who are members
of Veda God says, 'I appreciate all of you equivalently to myself',
yet in Their seriousness They may add, 'but in doing this
I transcend those of you who cannot show me equivalent love'.
God's way is often that according to the worth to us of the thing we give
so we will receive in return - therefore Christ tells us that if you want
to become comparable to God it'll perhaps require disowning your whole
self-experience from time to time.
The happiness of the Lord is a strength.
Where the ocean's fish embrio decides to wiggle may enhance the joy of
the mathematician as he seeks his answers in the common room two days later.
God frees us with Her traps and traps us all into Their freedoms.,
Tenacity alone is sometimes the long way to solve a problem,
and a little susceptibility sometimes provides the relevant
short routes to the answers.
Whenever people doubt that God wants to have compassion on them,
He has temporarily less compassion on them than He had ideally wanted to do.
And, overall in time, God shows the same amount of compassion
to each creature.
Self-pity may be acceptable - yet we should harmonise with
a fair maximised compassion, sympathy
and pitiful mercy towards all others.
It's sometimes best not to talk to someone until you realise as to in what
ways you must appreciate them equivalently to yourself.
For instance do they seem to want you to appreciate them more than yourself
or equally or less - be contented if you don't know.
Only the love of the universe Herself - the Empress - seems
independent in fulness - and all others seem to dependently
receive their love and acts of giving.
By a creature's giving the Lord gives... to Herself.
By a creature's asking the Lord asks... from Herself.
By a creature's receiving the Lord receives... from Herself.
God is in the business of making us succeed and taking away our failure.
Love's only possible error is to not have enough of it..
The Grand Veda's will and ability are in complete mutual cooperation
but others' wills and abilities are not...
Our willingness presides over our ability
while ability limits what our will can achieve,
yet present willingness determines our future ability.
Some loves are only a partial image of God's greater-substantiated love.
Love forgoes all except what is needed to love,
and believes all truths presented to it.
Let God and don't let go of God.
Faith rejoices in the promises before they are fulfilled...
Our faith rejoices to expect the promise, and it helps to fulfil the promise...
All good hopes are fulfilled infinitely many times in the future
and they often become transcendently fulfilled as loving relationships
rather than merely imaginary hopes
- with known identities, perceived times and observed positions...
So all good hopes transform into shared relationships from time to time.
Our infinite good hopes eventually become richer and greater than
our infinite disappointments, and these transcending hopes are all
eventually actualised in unity with those of others.
Hope makes you feel lucky - in a good way.
Faith, Expectation and Goodness is an experience in the mind and heart
and sensitivity - with a feeling of the will in surrender
and the contentment is accepting.
Faith is a pen by which a man can write his love into the fabric of
eternity with the indelible ink of hope and expectation, as a glorious
autobiography - kept forever alive in the library of history.
Zealous hope without knowledge is like expedition to a man in the dark.
Better a walk in trust with enthusiasm than know all and fail.
An unverified presumption of a good hope is a better incentive for
activity than the unchecked presumption of a reason to fear.
Because it is better to experience the man whose optimistic good hopes
are disappointed than to experience the man whose pessimistic fears
prove unfounded.
The mind shouldn't think about only things it can comprehend for too
long - it is designed to be a mystery-processing evolving organ
for apprehending, knowing and dealing with infinite and eternal ideas
with wisdom, honesty, understanding and acceptance.
Many transcendently important things are not necessarily in themselves
transcendently complex, but are accessible to all beings while in
rich or impoverished states of experience, so as to facilitate mutual
understanding between all beings - when they are great with the small
and when they are small with the great.
Better to learn mystery with integrity than have an illusion of knowledge
in your insincerity.
Better unknowing with acceptance, rather than anti-relevant distraction
or willfully-useless ignorance.
Our experience and language use wax and wane in all beings, to make
room for growth in mystery and surprise - and our love experience
eventually increases to the maximum - never to decrease again.
Eternity can be scanned when we are able to identify
the relevance of each statement we encounter.
Everyone continually changes and becomes new.
God shares the sense of freedom that comes with a successful reward
in life with us - yet He does this in a way that makes our freedom
depend on His freedom - our freedom is willed by His freedom
- it is not our own ability of will that necessarily always
succeeds in ensuring our continued freedom.
So with God, our time should become our servant as well as our master.
To experience the universe through a symbol
- all eternity signified by a dot...
Sometimes craziness is the only sane and sober course of action.
Not accepting your limits, limits you.
It's not just what you do, but how;
who you do it to first,
when you choose to do it,
and where you choose to do it.
Love can be expressed merely by listening to someone with whom you
have much disagreement and yet you can find their presence fascinating...
The rule of God's kingdom is socialist - 'having everything in common',
a meritocracy - 'capitalising on all good abilities',
and a collective autocracy governed in such a way as to become forever
a fully agreed democracy.
Unreliable falsifications of religion are toxic fruits that can be
safely and profitably enjoyed if you are able to extract the poisons
- yet only by reliance on God can this be done without harm.
Money, like love, finds its means of growing by its being given.
Money is like a stringed instrument - designed to be used to express
serenity, harmony and wonder.
Problematic correspondence can ruin ideal intentions...
God tests us by sending us displeasure and we test Him when we sin...
Having a problem marks your susceptibility.
Considering your problem marks responsibility.
Solving your problem means getting lucky.
To fall into guilt is weak,
to consider present guilt as innocence is callous.
What God most yearns for is a blameless obedience,
but that there is none else that He cares for,
is one of the most devious lies of the Enemy.
A creature revolting against the Creator is revolting
against the source of his own powers--including even his power to revolt...
The order in which things are done often determines the speed at which
they can be done.
Something soft may also be strong, something hard may also be weak.
Our growing mature is the mysterious journey that we comprehend better
the further we travel.
Just because someone argues consistently for a particular description
of reality doesn't mean that they are fully convinced that it is true
and will win over the alternative descriptions of reality...
Its one thing to bat for a particular cricket team and quite another
to know that your team will win the tournament.
It's one thing to hold a doctrine and another to actually believe
it - to know its true.
And beyond this - it is one thing to believe a theology
and another to trust your life to a God of your theology.
A ranking of mind: Appreciation ranks over interest.
Interest ranks over consideration.
Consideration ranks over evaluation.
Evaluation ranks over negotiation.
Negotiation ranks over knowledge.
Knowledge ranks over perception.
Perception ranks over observation.
Observation ranks over mere imagination stripped of
any real information concerning the who, the when and the where of each
experience.
The great deal of the so-called fictional stories record in detail the facts
of what happened to real people in previous incarnations
or what will happen to people at a later time...
I've had some rather big ideas - and a lot of them were viewed
from an exceedingly small point of view....
Goodness, expectation and faith know how to expect to cause
what they didn't expect. A lot of love and life - ever and anon,
is what happens to you contrary to your other plans. We each arrive
at a fully happy experience of all those alternative results to the
results we had planned according to our best working hypotheses.
Hope in good luck.
The Divine Words that land on the earth like a seed
also speak the earth into existence..
Everything that has an end has a beginning.. even if that beginning gets
forever swallowed inside the end.
Contented happiness allows us to enjoy the noise within the silence and
the silence within the noise.
How can generalities help us with specifics? Thats a good question
and quite a general one, um, err....
Compassion or sympathy for the Devil can lead people to Christ.
Spiritually tamed flesh wildly shared can be.
Anything you experience in the universe is concurrently being experienced
by infinitely many other creatures in eternity
from their infinitely many various points of view.
Time equivalates and it also disequivalates.
The meaning of insanity is not irrelevancy but anti-relevancy
- irrelevancy might perhaps be termed as a 'sane insanity'
- an apparent inffectuality is neither apparently sane
nor apparently insane - an apparent incapacity is not a mal-ability.
I may care even if I'm going somewhere.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) —
It is one of the most beautiful compensations of this life
that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.
Nature magically suits a man to his fortunes,
by making them the fruit of his character.
People seem not to see that their opinion of the world
is also a confession of their character.
Every violation of truth is not only a sort of suicide in the liar,
but is a stab at the health of human society.
– Stefan Salmonsson —
Self pity comes when you lose the intimacy with Jesus.
– Elbert Hubbard —
The friend is the man who knows all about you, and still likes you.
The greatest mistake in life is to be continually fearing
that you will make one.
– Richard Bach —
Can miles truly separate you from friends...
If you want to be with someone you love, aren't you already there?
– Arthur Brisbane —
A good friend can tell you what is the matter with you in a minute.
He may not seem such a good friend after telling.
– William Blake (1757-1827) —
The bird a nest, the spider a web, man friendship.
– Oliver Wendell Holmes —
Without wearing any mask we are conscious of,
we have a special face for each friend.
– Real Live Preacher, RealLivePreacher.com Weblog, 4/1/2003 —
When someone allows you to bear his burdens, you have found deep friendship.
– Irish Proverb —
A friend's eye is a good mirror.
– Eugene Kennedy —
[A test of friendship]
Can you enjoy those moments of life that are utterly simple?
– Shirley MacLaine —
Fear makes strangers of people who would be friends.
– Lawana Blackwell —
It isn't kind to cultivate a friendship just so one will have an audience.
– Japanese Proverb —
When the character of a man is not clear to you, look at his friends.
– Anselm of Canterbury —
God does not delay to hear our prayers because He has no mind to give;
but that, by enlarging our desires, He may give us the more largely.
– Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. (1841-1935) —
The character of every act depends upon the circumstances
in which it is done.
– Eleanor Roosevelt —
When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act
to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?
– George Washington Carver —
How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young,
compassionate with the aged,
sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and strong.
Because someday in life you will have been all of these.
– William Penn —
I expect to pass through life but once. If therefore,
there be any kindness I can show, or any good thing
I can do to any fellow being, let me do it now,
and not defer or neglect it, as I shall not pass this way again.
– Frederick W. Faber —
Kindness has converted more sinners than zeal...
– Robert Browning —
Good to forgive - Best to forget.
– Reinhold Niebuhr, American theologian (1892-1971) —
God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things
that cannot be changed, courage to change the things
that can be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish one from the other.
All men who live with any degree of serenity live by some assurance of grace.
– Benjamin Jowett (1817-1893) —
Grace is an energy...
It is as real an energy as the energy of electricity.
It is a divine energy; it is the energy of the divine affection
rolling in plenteousness toward the shores of human need.
– Catherine Marshall —
No matter how little you have, you can always give some of it away.
– Aldous Huxley, The Perennial Philosophy —
'Our kingdom go' is the necessary and unavoidable corollary
of 'Thy kingdom come'.
– Tony Campolo —
I don't know how your theology works, but if Jesus has a choice
between stained glass windows and feeding starving kids in Haiti,
I have a feeling he'd choose the starving kids in Haiti.
– Franklin Delano Roosevelt —
The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance
of those who have much, it is whether we provide enough
for those who have too little.
– Hugh Martin —
If a man's religion does not affect his use of money,
that man's religion is vain.
– Hermann Hesse —
The truth has a million faces, but there is only one truth.
– The Qur'an —
Wherever you turn, there is the face of God. (2:115)
– Chip Brogden —
We are often unprepared for Truth, which is why Truth is revealed to us
progressively.
– George Bernhard Shaw (1856-1950) —
You see things; and you say, 'Why?' But I dream things that never were;
and I say, 'Why not?'
– Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy —
All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love.
If one loves, one loves the whole person as he or she is,
and not as one might wish them to be.
Joy can be real only if people look upon their life as a service,
and have a definite object in life outside themselves and
their personal happiness.
Christianity is always adopted by people
as something forgotten and suddenly remembered.
He sends a cross, but He also sends the strength to bear it.
It is not beauty that endears, it's love that makes us see beauty.
Boredom: the desire for desires.
– Alexander Humbold —
First they ignore it, then they laugh at it,
then they say they knew it all along.
– Claud-Adrian Helvetius —
Truth is the torch that gleams through the fog without dispelling it.
– Thomas Paine —
He who dares not offend cannot be [fully] honest.
– Blaise Pascal —
We know the truth, not only by the reason, but also by the heart.
– Henry Ward Beecher —
God asks no man whether he will accept life. That is not the choice.
You must accept it. The only choice is how.
– Seneca, Epistles (5BC-65AD) —
Live among men as if God beheld you; speak to God as if men were listening.
– Dr. Samuel Johnson, The Rambler (1709-1784) —
In order that all men might be taught to speak truth,
it is necessary that all likewise should learn to hear it.
– Plutarch (46-120) —
Know how to listen, and you will profit even from those who talk badly.
Many things which cannot be overcome when they are together,
yield themselves up when taken little by little.
– Henry David Thoreau —
There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil
to one who is striking at the root.
– Charles Dickens —
All good ends can be worked out by good means.
– Eden Phillpotts —
The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits
to grow sharper.
– Will Durant —
The trouble with most people is that they think with their hopes or fears
or wishes rather than with their minds.
– Frank Lloyd Wright (1869-1959) —
The thing always happens that you really believe in;
and the belief in a thing makes it happen.
– Tao Te Ching, 23AD —
He who does not trust enough will not be trusted.
– John Ortberg —
For many of us the great danger is not that we will renounce our faith.
It is that we will become so distracted and rushed and preoccupied
that we will settle for a mediocre version of it.
Human conversation is largely an endless attempt to convince others
that we are more assertive or clever or generous or successful
than they might think if we did not carefully educate them.
– F.F. Bosworth —
Believe your beliefs and doubt your doubts.
– William Cowper —
Where men of judgment creep and feel their way,
The positive pronounce without dismay.
Meditation here may think down hours to moments.
Here the heart may give a useful lesson to the head and
learning wiser grow without his books.
Reasoning at every step he treads, Man yet mistakes his way,
Whilst meaner things, whom instinct leads, Are rarely known to stray.
They whom truth and wisdom lead, can gather honey from a weed.
A fool must now and then be right, by chance.
Absence of proof is not proof of absence.
– Buddha, Hindu Prince Gautama Siddharta —
Happiness never decreases by being shared.
Believe nothing just because a so-called wise person said it.
Believe nothing just because a belief is generally held.
Believe nothing just because it is said in ancient books.
Believe nothing just because it is said to be of divine origin.
Believe nothing just because someone else believes it.
Believe only what you yourself test and judge to be true.
Whatever words we utter should be chosen with care for people will hear them
and be influenced by them for good or ill.
An insincere and evil friend is more to be feared than a wild beast;
a wild beast may wound your body, but an evil friend will wound your mind.
– Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) —
I don't like that man. I must get to know him better.
I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice.
Surely God would not have created such a being as man,
with an ability to grasp the infinite, to exist only for a day!
No, no, man was made for immortality.
It's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.
The time comes upon every public man when it is best for him to keep
his lips closed.
To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men.
– A. W. Tozer —
If God gives you a watch, are you honoring Him more by asking Him
what time it is or by simply consulting the watch?
– Cicero, Ad Atticum (106BC-43BC) —
While there's life, there's hope.
– Warren W. Wiersbe —
The way we respond to criticism pretty much depends on the way
we respond to praise. If praise humbles us, then criticism
will build us up. But if praise inflates us, then criticism
will crush us; and both responses lead to our defeat.
– Dennis Roth —
If it takes a lot of words to say what you have in mind
- give it more thought.
– Spanish Proverb —
Don't speak unless you can improve on the silence.
– Jonathan Swift —
May you live all the days of your life.
– Anais Nin —
Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage.
– Mark Ashton Warner —
What sullies and sticks:
sin so regretted;
All the mess that you're in.
What life has thrown at you ... ... ...
... ... ... Nothing is wasted
- God's so much bigger -
Yes, all of the dross
- makes fertile ground when left at the cross.
...Love transforms darkness....
– Socrates, (469-399 BC) —
It is never right to do wrong or to requite wrong with wrong,
or when we suffer evil to defend ourselves by doing evil in return.
– Martin Luther (1483-1546) —
Peace if possible, truth at all costs.
– Malcolm X (1925-1965), Malcolm X Speaks, 1965 —
You can't separate peace from freedom because
no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom.
– Anthony deMello, Awakenings —
May the peace of God disturb you always.
– John Greenleaf Whittier —
Peace hath higher tests of manhood than battle ever knew.
– Michele Shea —
Creativity is... seeing something that doesn't exist already.
You need to find out how you can bring it into being
and that way be a playmate with God.
– Elizabeth Rundle —
To know how to say what other people only think,
is what makes men poets and sages; and to dare to say
what others only dare to think, makes men martyrs or reformers.
– John Muncee —
You'll never be able to speak against sin if you're entertained by it.
– Baba Ji —
Every sinner has a future; Every saint had a past.
– Heraclitus, Greek philosopher (c.540-480 BC) —
Man's character is his fate.
– Everett Hathaway —
Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather,
the judgment that something is more important than fear.
– English Proverb —
Give the devil his due.
He is not wise that is not wise for himself.
– Aristotle —
Dignity consists not in possessing honors,
but in the consciousness that we deserve them.
Character is plot.
– Isaac Newton —
Trials are medicines which our gracious and wise Physician prescribes
because we need them; and he proportions the frequency and
weight of them to what the case requires. Let us trust his skill
and thank him for his prescription.
– Stephen Hawking —
Not only does God play dice, but... He sometimes throws them
where they cannot be seen.
To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit
the human spirit.
The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance,
it is the illusion of knowledge.
– Neils Bohr —
How wonderful that we have met with a paradox.
Now we have some hope of making progress.
– Dave Wilbur —
One of the world's greatest problems is the impossibility
of any person searching for the truth on any subject
when they believe they already have it.
– Mahatma Gandhi —
A man who was completely innocent, offered himself as a sacrifice
for the good of others, including his enemies, and became
the ransom of the world. It was a perfect act.
A coward is incapable of exhibiting love; it is the prerogative of the brave.
We must always seek to ally ourselves with that part of the enemy
that knows what is right.
No one has a right to coerce others to act according to his
own view of truth.
Intolerance betrays want of faith in one's cause.
Earth can provide enough to satisfy everyone's needs
but not everyone's greed.
– Wayne W. Dyer —
Everything in the universe has a purpose.
Indeed, the invisible intelligence that flows through everything
in a purposeful fashion is also flowing through you...
We are divine enough to ask and we are important enough to receive.
Treasure your divinity.
If you are living out of a sense of obligation you are slave.
You are doomed to make choices.
It makes no sense to worry about things you have no control over
because there's nothing you can do about them,
and why worry about things you do control?
The activity of worrying keeps you immobilized.
– Albert Einstein (1879-1955) —
The high destiny of the individual is to serve rather than to rule.
As a child I received instruction both in the Bible and in the Talmud.
I am a Jew, but I am enthralled by the luminous figure of the Nazarene...
No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus.
His personality pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with such life.
A human being is part of a whole, called by us the 'universe',
a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself,
his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest
- a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.
This delusion is a kind of prison for us,
restricting us to our personal desires and to affection
for a few persons nearest us.
Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison
by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures
and the whole of nature in its beauty.
How strange is the lot of us mortals!
Each of us is here for a brief sojourn;
for what purpose he knows not, though he senses it.
But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life that
one exists for other people.
Once we accept our limits, we go beyond them.
Perfection of means and confusion of ends seem to characterize our age.
To know what is impenetrable to us really exists,
manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty...
this knowledge, this feeling is at the centre of true religiousness.
Intellectuals solve problems, geniuses prevent them.
In the midst of difficulty lies opportunity...
It is the duty of every citizen according to his best capacities
to give validity to his convictions in political affairs.
Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it.
The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once.
Never lose a holy curiosity.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.
One strength of the communist system of the East is that it has some
of the character of a religion and inspires the emotions of a religion.
The search for truth implies a duty. One must not conceal
any part of what one has recognized to be true.
Why does this applied science, which saves work and makes life easier,
bring us so little happiness? The simple answer runs:
Because we have not yet learned to make sensible use of it.
The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem.
It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one.
Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.
– J. Robert Oppeheimer —
Both the man of science and the man of action live always at the edge
of mystery, surrounded by it.
No man should escape our universities without knowing how little
he knows.
– Enrico Fermi —
Before I came here I was confused about this subject.
Having listened to your lecture I am still confused.
But on a higher level.
– Thomas Jefferson (1762-1826) —
Information is the currency of democracy.
He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind
is filled with falsehoods and errors.
– Paulo Freire —
Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful
and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.
– Elie Wiesel —
There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice,
but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.
– W. Lance Bennett —
When faced with a choice between confronting an unpleasant reality
and defending a set of comforting and socially accepted beliefs,
most people choose the later course.
– Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) —
When the natural weakness and imperfection of human understanding
is considered, with the unavoidable influences of education,
custom, books and company, upon our ways of thinking,
I imagine a man must have a good deal of vanity who believes,
and a good deal of boldness who affirms,
that all the doctrines he holds, are true, and all he rejects are false.
Half a truth is often a great lie.
– Patrick Henry, March 23, 1775 —
Should I keep back my opinions at such a time,
through fear of giving offense,
I should consider myself as guilty of treason towards my country,
and of an act of disloyalty toward the Majesty of Heaven,
which I revere above all earthly kings.
– Paul Tillich —
Depression is rage spread thin.
– Arthur W. Pink —
Prayer is not so much an act as it is an attitude
— an attitude of dependency, dependency upon God.
– Oswald Chambers —
We have to make manifest in the flesh the visions of the spirit.
Thank God we are going to heaven when we die, but thank God
we are not going until we die.
Is the Son of God praying in me, or am I dictating to Him?...
Prayer is not simply getting things from God, that is a most initial
form of prayer; prayer is getting into perfect communion with God.
If the Son of God is formed in us by regeneration, He will press forward
in front of our common sense and change our attitude to the things
about which we pray.
It is not prayer that is strenuous, but the overcoming of our own laziness.
– Fredrik Wisloff —
You may pray for an hour and still not pray. You may meet God for a moment
and then be in touch with Him all day.
– Joseph Scriven —
Oh what peace we often forfeit; oh what needless pains we bear
all because we do not carry everything to God in prayer.
– Ed Cole —
Wishing will never be a substitute for prayer.
– Charles H. Brent —
Pray hardest when it is hardest to pray.
– E.P. Thompson, British historian —
The foulest damage to our political life comes not from the 'secrets'
which they hide from us, but from the little bits of half-truth
and disinformation which they do tell us.
– Woodrow Wilson —
I would rather lose in a cause that will some day win,
than win in a cause that will some day lose.
– William Gurnall —
We fear men so much, because we fear God so little.
– Sundar Singh —
Every selfish man, strangely enough, becomes a self slayer.
– Friedrich Nietsche —
What else is love but understanding and rejoicing in the fact
that another person lives, acts, and experiences otherwise than we do...?
He that humbleth himself wishes to be exalted.
He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk
and run and climb and dance...
On the mountains of truth you can never climb in vain:
either you will reach a point higher up today,
or you will be training your powers
so that you will be able to climb higher tomorrow.
All sciences are now under the obligation to prepare the ground
for the future task of the philosopher,
which is to solve the problem of value,
to determine the true hierarchy of values.
Is life not a thousand times too short for us to bore ourselves?
It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what others
say in a whole book.
To forget one's purpose is the commonest form of stupidity.
'To give style' to one's character
- a great and rare art! He exercises it who surveys
all that his nature presents in strength and weakness
and then moulds it to an artistic plan until everything
appears as art and reason, and even the weaknesses delight the eye.
What is good? All that heightens the feeling of power,
the will to power, power itself in man.
To exercise power costs effort and demands courage.
That is why so many fail to assert rights to which
they are perfectly entitled
- because a right is a kind of power but
they are too lazy or too cowardly to exercise it.
Sleeping is no mean art: for its sake one must stay awake all day.
To use the same words is not a sufficient guarantee of understanding;
one must use the same words for the same genus of inward experience;
ultimately one must have one's experiences in common.
War has always been the grand sagacity of every spirit
which has grown too inward...
its curative power lies even in the wounds one receives.
If you stare into the abyss long enough the abyss stares back at you.
– Adolf Hitler —
Beyond the life of the individual is the nation...
– Douglas Adams —
Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn
from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their
apparent disinclination to do so.
– Jeremy Clarkson —
[On American city Detroit] - 'God may have created the world in six days,
but while He was resting on the seventh,
Beelzebub popped up and did this place.'
[On the Lotus Elise] - 'This car is more fun than the entire
French Air Force crashing into a firework factory.'
– From Jedidiah's (Solomon's) book of Proverbs
(mainly based on the Concordant Literal Version) —
Trust in Iyehuweh with all your heart,
And do not lean to your own understanding.
In all your ways acknowledge Him,
And He Himself shall straighten (make efficient) your paths. (3:5-6)
...The devious man is an abhorrence to Iyehuweh,
yet with the resolute is His deliberation. (3:32)
The fear of Iyehuweh is a fountain of life - To keep one away from
the traps of death. (14:27)
The path of life leads upward for the intelligent man,
that he may keep away from the unseen (hades) below. (15:24)
Better is exposed reproof, than love that is concealed. (27:5)
A man's gift widens the way for him and guides him before the great. (18:16)
A lamp of Iyehuweh is the breath of humanity,
searching all the chambers of the belly. (20:27)
Roll over your doings to Iyehuweh, and your designs shall be
established... All the ways of a man seem pure in his eyes,
yet it is Iyehuweh Who regulates the directions...
To the human belong the arrangements of the heart,
yet from Iyehuweh is the answer of the tongue. (16:3,2,1)
In the bosom is cast forth the lot;
yet from Iyehuweh is its every judgment. (16:33)
Casting the lot causes quarrels to cease,
and between staunch people it decides. (18:18)
From Iyehuweh are the steps of a master;
How then shall a human understand his way? (20:24)
Prepare your work outside, and equip it for yourself in the field;
afterward you may then build up your household. (24:27)
When arrogance comes, then dishonor will also come, yet with the meek
is wisdom... Wealth is no benefit in the day of rage,
yet just-togetherness shall rescue from death. (11:2,4)
A simple person believes in every kind of word, yet a prudent man
he is giving consideration to his progress. (14:15)
The stupid are allotted folly, as yet the prudent are surrounded
by knowledge. (14:18)
Mischief is like sport to a fool
and so is wisdom to a man of understanding. (10:23)
Wisdom... shall bestow a wreath of grace on your head;
a crown of beauty shall she award to you. (4:9)
It is a trap for a man to assume that something is holy,
and only after making vows to make an enquiry into it. (20:25)
The ear that is hearkening to life-giving correction,
it shall lodge among the wise.
He who renounces discipline rejects his own soul,
yet he who hearkens to correction acquires heart. (15:31-32)
The luminosity of eyes rejoices the heart;
a good report is lubricating the bones. (15:30)
Death and life are in the grip of the tongue,
and they who love her they shall eat her fruit. (18:21)
A healing tongue is a tree of life,
yet subversion in her are breaking the spirit. (15:4)
Deep waters are the words of a man's mouth;
a watercourse flowing forth is the fountain of wisdom. (18:4)
From the fruit of a man's mouth, his belly is satisfied;
with the income from his lips he will be satisfied. (18:20)
He who preserves his mouth may be guarding his soul. (13:3)
Like rivulets of water is the heart of a king in the hand of Iyehuweh;
wherever He desires, He turns it aside. (21:1)
The heart of a man devises his way,
yet Iyehuweh is establishing his steps. (16:9)
The smelter for silver and the crucible for gold,
yet Iyehuweh is testing hearts. (17:3)
As water reflects the faces to the faces,
so does a man's heart reflects man. (27:19)
More than all guarding, preserve your heart,
for from it are the outgoings of life. (4:23)
Deep waters is the counsel in the heart of a man,
yet a man of understanding is drawing her out. (20:5)
Let a stranger praise you, and not your own mouth, a foreigner,
and certainly not your own lips... Do not boast about tomorrow,
for you do not know what a day may generate. (27:2,1)
Dedicate a youth as is corresponding to the way for him;
so that when he is old he shall not withdraw from her. (22:6)
The precious wealth of a man is diligence. (12:27)
There is a way of that seems upright before a man,
yet the ways of death are the end of her... Even in mirth the heart
may be in pain, and the last of her rejoicing may be affliction. (14:12-13)
Wealth gained from vanity decreases,
yet one who gets it together by his hands increases it. (13:11)
Futility and the lying word put far from me;
destitution or riches You would not give to me,
only give me my daily dole of bread... (30:8)
You must not labour to become rich;
In your understanding stop considering it. (23:4)
He who is giving to the destitute person is having no lack,
yet for him who obscures his eyes from them are many curses. (28:27)
He who increases his wealth by charging interest and by increasing interest
is getting it together for him who is gracious to the poor. (28:8)
One who holds fast a dog by its ears - is the passer by who
trespasses upon a contention not his. (26:17)
Behold a man wise in his own eyes - there is more expectation for
a fool than for him... The slothful man is wiser in his own eyes than
seven men who reply with discretion. (26:12,16)
Webpage reference keywords:
Christian quotes, Inspiring quotes, Religious quotes,
Choice quotes, Universalist quotes, Sermon quotes,
Christian proverbs, Inspiring proverbs, Religious proverbs,
Choice proverbs, Universalist proverbs, Sermon proverbs,
Distilled understanding, Distilled comprehension,
Distilled knowledge, Distilled wisdom.