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I dislike labels. None of us should be constrained by persuasions, ideologies, or perspectives. We are far too complicated and complex to be "boxed" into a particular mindset simply because "that's what everyone else thinks." I take exception to all those people who think they have me (or you) figured out when they really don't know us at all. ~ Mike Hendricks , Mike at Night (2000)
If you want the last word, apologise. 'What think ye of Heaven and Glory that is at the back of the Cross?' The hope of this makes me look upon pale death as a lovely messenger to me. I bless the Lord for my lot this day.... Friends, give our Lord credit; He is aye good, but 0! He is good in a day of trial, and He will be sweet company through the ages of Eternity. Archibald Alison [Todd] Beamer then told Jefferson [the GTE supervisor with whom he was in mobile phone contact] that he and the others had decided to "jump on" the hijacker wearing the bomb. Jefferson could hear shouts and commotion and then Beamer asked her to pray with him. They recited the 23rd Psalm. He got Jefferson to promise that she would call his family, then dropped the phone, leaving the line open. That's when Jefferson heard what Lisa Beamer believes were her husband's last words: "Let's roll. ~from post-gazette.com Applaud friends, the comedy is over. Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) So little done, so much to do.--- Alexander Graham Bell, his last words. Glory to God, who hath not been wanting to me in giving
assistance, yea, many times unsought; and He is yet
continuing and I hope shall do so to the end, to carry me
above the fear of death, so that I am in as sweet a calm, as
if I were going to be married to one dearly beloved. Alas!
my cold heart is not able to answer His burning love; but
what is wanting in me is, and shall be, made up in a Saviour
complete and well furnished in all things, appointed of the
Father for this end, to bring His straying children to their
own Home, whereof, I think I may venture to say it, I am
one, though worthless. Now I have no time to enlarge, else I
would give you a more particular account Of God's goodness
and dealing with me; but let this suffice, that I am once
fairly on the way, and within the view of Immanuel's Land,
and in hopes to be received an inhabitant there within the
space of twenty-six hours at most. I have no more spare
time. Grace, mercy and peace be with you. Amen. Welcome,
cross; welcome, gallows; welcome, Christ; welcome, heaven,
and everlasting happiness. No, it's not. --Dietrich Bonhoefer, at his execution, in response to a Nazi soldier who had stated, "This must be the end, then." (April 9, 1945). Be of good comfort brother; for we shall have a merry
supper with the Lord this night! Cameron had but time for a few words of prayer, one petition of which he repeated thrice, " Lord, spare the green and take the ripe!" On concluding this prayer, he took his brother's hand for the last time, and said, " Now, let us fight it out to the last: for this is the day I have longed for, and the day I have prayed for, to die fighting against our Lord's avowed enemies?" The struggle was short but desperate. Cameron himself was killed in the thick of the fray, as well as his brother and seven others. Five, also, were sore wounded and taken prisoners (Hackston of Rathillet being leader), while the rest escaped over the moss, whither the cavalry could not pursue them. The prisoners were taken to Edinburgh, and there hanged. The head and hands of Cameron were cut off and taken to Edinburgh; and on delivering them up, the officer who carried them said, " There are the head and hands of a man who lived praying and preaching, and who died praying and fighting." - The Covenanters of Ayrshire by Rev. Roderick Lawson, 1904. This is the most joyful day that ever I saw in my
pilgrimage on earth. My joy is now begun which I see shall
never be interrupted ... It is nearly thirty years since He
made it sure... I have followed holiness, I have taught
truth, and I have been most in the main things... This day I
am to seal with my blood all the truths that ever I preached
... I had a great sweetness of spirit and great submission
as to my taking, the Providence of God was so eminent in it;
and I could not but think that God judged it necessary for
His glory to bring me to such an end, seeing he loosed me
from such a work . The Lord knows I go up this ladder with
less fear, confusion or perturbation of mind, than ever I
entered a pulpit to preach. This hand hath offended. - Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer, burned at the stake for heresy on 21 March 1556, thrusts into the fire the hand with which, under torture, he had signed a recantation of his beliefs. I would be willing to live and be farther serviceable to
God and his people; but my work is done. Yet God will be
with his people. MY DESIGN IS TO MAKE WHAT HASTE I CAN TO BE GONE. .the fog is rising. - Emily Dickinson (1830 &endash; 1886), last words We shall meet again. I have believed in God. I obeyed the laws of war and was loyal to my flag.-- Adolf Eichmann: last words , hanged on 31 May 1962. How about this for a headline for tomorrow's paper? French fries. ~James French- electrocuted in Oklahoma 1966 I am more fortunate than the Great Marquis, (Archibald
Campbell, Marquis of Argyle) for my Lord was beheaded, but I
am to be hanged on a tree as my Saviour was. I take God to
record upon my soul, I would not exchange this scaffold with
the palace and mitre of the greatest prelate in Britain.
Blessed be God who has shown mercy to me such a wretch, and
has revealed His Son in me, and made me a minister of the
everlasting Gospel, and that He hath deigned, in the midst
of much contradiction from Satan, and the world, to seal my
ministry upon the hearts of not a few of His people, and
especially in the station where I was last, I mean the
congregation and presbytery of Stirling. Jesus Christ is my
Life and my Light, my Righteousness, my strength, and my
Salvation and all my desire. Him! O Him, I do with all the
strength of my soul commend to you. Bless Him, O my soul,
from henceforth even forever. Lord, now lettest Thou Thy
servant depart in peace for mine eyes have seen Thy
salvation. 'Art not Thou from everlasting, O Lord my God. I
shall not die but live.' The Covenants! The Covenants! They
shall yet be Scotland's reviving. Be not afraid at His
sweet, lovely and desirable cross, for although I have not
been able because of my wounds to lift up or lay down my
head, but as I was helped, yet I was never in better case
all my life. He has not given me one challenge since I came
to prison, for anything less or more; but on the contrary He
has so wonderfully shined on me with the sense of His
redeeming, strengthening, assisting, supporting,
through-bearing, pardoning and reconciling love, grace and
mercy, that my soul doth long to be freed of bodily
infirmities and earthly organs, that so I may flee to His
Royal Palace even the Heavenly Habitation of my God, where I
am sure of a crown put on my head, and a palm put in my
hand, and a new song in my mouth, even the song of Moses and
of the Lamb, that so I may bless, praise, magnify and extol
Him for what He hath done to me and for me. Wherefore I bid
farewell to all my dear fellow-sufferers for the testimony
of Jesus, who are wandering in dens and caves. Farewell, my
children, study holiness in all your ways, and praise the
Lord for what He hath done for me, and tell all my Christian
friends to praise Him on my account. Farewell, sweet Bible,
and wanderings and contendings for truth. Welcome, death.
Welcome, the City of my God where I shall see Him and be
enabled to serve Him eternally with full freedom. Welcome,
blessed company, the angels and spirits of just men made
perfect. But above all, welcome, welcome, welcome, our
glorious and alone God, Father, Son and Holy Ghost; into Thy
hands I commit my spirit for Thou art worthy. Amen. Now farewell, lovely and sweet Scriptures, which were aye
my comfort in the midst of all my difficulties! Farewell,
faith! Farewell, hope! Farewell, wanderers,who have been
comfortable to my soul, in the hearing of them commend
Christ's love! Farewell, brethren! Farewell, sisters!
Farewell, Christian acquaintances! Farewell, sun, moon and
stars! And, now, welcome my lovely, heartsome Christ Jesus,
into whose hands I commit my spirit throughout all eternity.
I may say, few and evil have the days of the years of my
life been, I being about twenty years of age. I shall be free from sin and all the temptations and
anxieties that attend it...I shall dwell... where these eyes
shall see my Master and Saviour. I am about to take my last voyage, a great leap in the dark. --Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) (Last words) Shout the victory of Jesus Christ! - John Hyde (1865-1912) last words Vicisti,, Galilaee. Nellie Connally:You sure can't say Dallas doesn't love
you, Mr. President. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I 'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over, and I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land . . . . So I'm happy tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. --Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) _Address to sanitation workers at Memphis, Tennessee_, [April 3, 1968] (The night before his assassination) Be of good comfort Master Ridley, and play the man. We shall this day light such a candle by God's grace in England, as (I trust) shall never be put out.--Hugh Latimer I die innocent of all the crimes laid to my charge; I pardon those who have occasioned my death; and I pray to God that the blood you are now going to shed may never bevisited on France; and you, unfortunate people.... - Louis XVI Last Words 21 January 1793 Let them bestow on every airth a limb; The King's good servant, but God's First. I die before my time and my body shall be given back to the earth and devoured by worms. What an abysmal gulf between my deep miseries and the eternal Kingdom of Christ. I marvel that whereas the ambitious dreams of myself and of Alexander and of Caesar should have vanished into thin air, a Judean peasant-Jesus-should be able to stretch his hands across the centuries, and control the destinies of men and nations.--NAPOLEON My soul doth magnify the Lord! my soul doth magnify the
Lord! I have longed these sixteen years to seal the precious
cause and interest of precious Christ with my blood. And
now, now He hath answered and granted my request, and has
left me no more ado but to come here and pour forth my last
prayers, sing forth my last praise to Him in time on this
sweet and desirable scaffold, mount that ladder, and then I
shall quickly get home to my Father's House, see, enjoy,
serve and sing forth the praises of my glorious Redeemer,
for evermore world without end. I am just going outside, and may be some time. Lawrence Oates (1880 &endash; 1912) Leave me as I am, the one who gives me strength to endure
the fire will also give me strength to stay quite still on
the pyre., even without the precaution of your nails.... For
eighty and six years I have been his servant, and he has
done me no wrong, and how can I blaspheme my King who saved
me? Had we lived, I should have had a tale to tell of the hardihood, endurance, and courage of my companions which would have stirred the heart of every Englishman. These rough notes and our dead bodies must tell the tale. - Robert Falcon Scott (1868 &endash; 1912), on his doomed Antarctic expedition We are going to Heaven.- Farewell, all created enjoyments, pleasures and delights; farewell, sinning and suffering; farewell, praying and believing, and welcome, heaven and singing. Welcome, joy in the Holy Ghost; welcome, Father Son and Holy Ghost; into Thy hands I commend my spirit. I have one word more to say, and that is, to all that have any love to God and His righteous cause, that they will set time apart, and sing a song of praise to the Lord, for what He has done to my soul, and my soul says, "To Him be the praise." Walter Smith 27 July 1681 Margaret Wilson and Margaret MacLachlan, were wrestling
in their cruel heavy swellings of Jordan. They were summer
and winter in the glorious cause, Margaret of the flaxen
hair, and Margaret of the grey. From the darksome
prisonhouse, the soldiers took them to the banks of the
Blednoch Burn which fills with Solway from the sea when the
swift-running tide comes in. Two long wooden stakes had been
fixed deeply in the bed of the burn. The farther out one,
nearer the oncoming waves, was for mother Margaret; and the
other, nearer to the land, was for Margaret the maid.
Laugh at your problems. Everyone else does! Those who can't laugh at themselves leave the job to others. Laughing helps. It's like jogging on the inside. You are never fully dressed until you wear a smile. Laughter is like changing a baby's diaper. It doesn't permanently solve any problems, but it makes thing more acceptable for awhile. Laugh a lot, and when you're older, all your wrinkles will be in the right places. It is better to weep with wise men than to laugh with fools. Spanish Proverb If we may believe our logicians, man is distinguished from all other creatures by the faculty of laughter." ~ Joseph Addison Laughter is the closest thing to the grace of God.-Karl Barth Mirth is God's medicine. Everybody ought to bathe in it. Grim care, moroseness, anxiety--all this rust of life--ought to be scoured off by the oil of mirth.--Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887) Laughter is the shortest distance between two people. Victor Borge In a time like the present, when the ties of religion have been sadly relaxed, there is a tendency for popular leaders to exalt themselves in a kind of bogus deity and to think their shallow creeds a divine revelation. The answer to all that sort of folly islaughter. John Buchan, 1938 Blessed are they that can laugh at themselves,| for they
shall never lack a source of amusement. Laugh and the world laughs with you, snore and you sleep alone. ~Mrs Patrick Campbell, letter to GBS (1912) I used to always think that I'd look back on us crying and laugh, but, I never thought I'd look back on us laughing and cry. - Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803 - 1882 Many times what cannot be refuted by arguments can be parried by laughter.--Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536)_The Praise of Folly_ [1509] Once you get people laughing, they're listening and you can tell them almost anything. Herbert Gardner Comedians and politicians each tell the audience what it wants to hear. The difference is that the audience laughs at the comedian and the politician laughs at the audience.-- Alexis A. Gilliland Laughter is a tranquilizer with no side effects. Arnold H. Glasow Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are and what they might havebeen. William Hazlitt If you don't learn to laugh at trouble, you won't have anything to laugh at when you're old. --Ed Howe At least one way of measuring the freedom of any society is the amount of comedy that is permitted, and clearly a healthy society permits more satirical comment than a repressive, so that if comedy is to function in some way as a safety release then it must obviously deal with these taboo areas. This is part of the responsibility we accord our licensed jesters, that nothing be excused the searching light of comedy. If anything can survive the probe of humour it is clearly of value, and conversely all groups who claim immunity from laughter are claiming special privileges which should not be granted. Eric Idle If you are not allowed to laugh in heaven, I don't want to go there. --Martin Luther (1483-1546) It is pleasing to God whenever thou rejoicest or laughest from the bottom of thy heart. --Martin Luther (1483-1546) Life does not cease to be funny when people die; any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh. George Bernard Shaw A good laugh is sunshine in a house. --- William Makepeace Thackeray Nature has made us frivolous to console us for our miseries. Voltaire, 1764
Court, n.: A place where they dispense with justice. You can make it illegal, but you can't make it unpopular. Where would Christianity be if Jesus got eight to fifteen years with time off for good behavior? - New York State Senator James Donovan, speaking in support of capital punishment. Fools and obstinate men make rich lawyers.--- Spanish. Proverb We hold from God the gift which includes all others. This gift is life˜physical, intellectual, and moral life. But life cannot maintain itself alone. The Creator of life has entrusted us with the responsibility of preserving, developing, and perfecting it. In order that we may accomplish this, He has provided us with a collection of marvelous faculties. And He has put us in the midst of a variety of natural resources. By the application of our faculties to these natural resources we convert them into products, and use them. This process is necessary in order that life may run its appointed course. Life, faculties, production˜in other words, individuality, liberty, property˜this is man. And in spite of the cunning of artful political leaders, these three gifts from God precede all human legislation, and are superior to it. Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.Frédéric Bastiat wrote _The Law_ ..because they had not obeyed my laws but had rejected my decrees...I also gave them over to statutes that were not good and laws they could not live by; - Ezek. 20:24,25 NIV Satan, n. One of the Creator's lamentable mistakes, repented in sashcloth and axes. Being instated as an archangel, Satan made himself multifariously objectionable and was finally expelled from Heaven. Halfway in his descent he paused, bent his head in thought a moment and at last went back. "There is one favor that I should like to ask," said he. "Name it." "Man, I understand, is about to be created. He will need laws." "What, wretch! you his appointed adversary, charged from the dawn of eternity with hatred of his soul˜you ask for the right to make his laws?" "Pardon; what I have to ask is that he be permitted to make them himself." It was so ordered. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" To retain respect for sausages and laws, one must not watch them in the making.- Otto von Bismarck, 1815 - 1898 It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer. - Sir William Blackstone (1723 &endash; 1780) No enactment of man can be considered law unless it conforms to the law of God. ~Blackstone, Commentaries on the English Common Law Upon these foundations, the law of nature and the law of revelation (Holy Scripture), depend all human laws; that is to say no human laws should be suffered to contradict these. WILLIAM BLACKSTONE The law sends us to the gospel , that we may be justified, and the gospel sends us to the law again to enquire what is our duty, being justified. Samuel Bolton Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny. -- Edmund Burke For the statement of some, that the law of God given
through Moses is dishonored when it is abrogated and new
laws preferred to it, is utterly vain. For others are not
preferred to it when they are more approved, not by a simple
comparison, but with regard to the condition of times,
place, and nation; or when that law is abrogated which was
never enacted for us. For the Lord through the hand of Moses
did not give that law to be proclaimed among all nations and
to be in force everywhere; but when he had taken the Jewish
nation into his safekeeping, defense, and protection, healso
willed to be a lawgiver especially to it; and -- as became a
wise lawgiver -- he had special concern for it in making its
laws. A lawsuit, however just, can never be rightly prosecuted by any man, unless he treat his adversary with the same love and good will as if the business under controversy were already amicably settled and composed. Perhaps someone will interpose here that such moderation is so uniformly absent from any lawsuit that it would be a miracle if any such were found. Indeed, I admit that, as the customs of these times go, an example of an upright litigant is rare; but the thing itself, when not corrupted by the addition of anything evil, does not cease to be good and pure. ... John Calvin (1509-1564), The Institutes of the Christian Religion If men will not be governed by the Ten Commandments, they shall be governed by the ten thousand commandments.--G.K. Chesterton When you break the big laws, you do not get liberty; you do not even get anarchy. You get the small laws. --G. K. Chesterton London _Daily News_ (7/29/1905) The truth is, of course, that the curtness of the Ten Commandments is an evidence, not of the gloom and narrowness of a religion, but, on the contrary, of its liberality and humanity. It is shorter to state the things forbidden than the things permitted: precisely because most things are permitted, and only a few things are forbidden. ---G.K. Chesterton, ILN 1-3-20 We are slaves of the law in order that we may be able to be free. --Marcus Tullius Cicero And there will not be different laws at Rome and at Athens, or different laws now and in the future, but one eternal and unchangeable law will be valid for all nations and for all times, and there will be one master and one rule, that is, God, over us all, for He is the author of this law, its promulgator, and its enforcing judge.- Cicero For decades, liberal judges have advanced their agenda by
arbitrarily declaring "rights" that defy the Western legal
tradition, articulated so well by Cicero, Aquinas and Martin
Luther King Jr., that just laws comport with God's laws.
They have declared that peddling pornography, killing unborn
babies and even same-sex marriage are "rights." Common law is common right. -. Edward Coke, as quoted by William Penn at his trial. Men do not make laws. They do but discover them. Laws must be justified by something more than the will of the majority. They must rest on the eternal foundation of righteousness. You can display no greater wisdom than by resisting proposals for needless legislation. It is much more important to kill bad bills than to pass good ones.--Calvin Coolidge, _Have Faith in Massachusetts_ p.4 NECESSITY HATH NO LAW.-- OLIVER CROMWELl 1599-1658 Speech to Parliament, Sept. 1654. A state is better governed which has few laws, and those laws strictly observed - Descartes The one great principle of the English law is, to make business for itself. --Charles Dickens _Bleak House_ (1853) I haven't committed a crime. What I did was fail to comply with the law. - David Dinkins (1927 &endash; ) US mayor (NYC), on accusations that he failed to pay taxes I freely acknowledge that it is almost impossible
systematically to constitute a natural moral law. Nature has
no principles. She furnishes us with no reason to believe
that human life is to be respected. Nature, in her
indifference, makes no distinction between good and
evil. In order to have a clear understanding of the Law of Moses and its relationship to the believer, it is necessary to view it as the Scriptures view it: as a unit that cannot be divided into parts that have been done away with and parts that have not.the Law in its totality no longer has authority over any individual - Arnold Fruchtenbaum: [Hebrew Christianity. p82-3]. The Law of Moses has been disannulled and we are now under a new law. This new law is called the Law of Christ.the Law of Christ contains many commandments similar to those found in the Mosaic Law.nine of the Ten Commandments are to be found in the Law of Christ. But this does not mean that the Law of Moses is still in force Arnold Fruchtenbaum: [HC. p86]. What are the consequences of this assault? Well, the idea that the person has inestimable value is just 'your view', not a principle to govern law. The idea that the unborn child must be protected or that older people deserve respect and honour becomes but a value preference, not an enduring truth. I want to be clear here. If Christianity is banished totally from public life, then the tentacles of the culture of death will spread still further. Break the link between Christianity and morality, you break the link between morality and law. The battle ground is the pro life debate. But the secular assault is starting new fronts. "Not the Church, not the State must decide a woman's fate" - you've heard the chants of the baby haters. My warning is that it has already added "Must decide what a family is" by extending the benefits of marriage to any kind of partnership. And it will soon add "... Must decide a child's schooling". Church schools watch out.- Ram Gidoomal ,"Karma, Politics and the Holy Spirit" - A Review of the CPA's Future, Address to the Catholic Charismatic Renewal Group, Saturday June 19th 224 Friends House, Euston Only law can give us freedom.--Goethe As mankind is made, the keeping it in order is an ill-natured office.-- Marquess of Halifax, _Political thoughts and reflections_,17th century In all countries there has been fornication, as in all countries therehas been theft; but there may be more or less of the one, as well as the other, in proportion to the force of law. All men will naturally commit fornication, as all men will naturally steal. And, Sir, it is very absurd to argue, as has been often done, that prostitutes are necessary to prevent the violent effects of appetite from violating the decent order of life; nay, should be permitted, in order to preserve the chastity of our wives and daughters. Depend upon it, Sir, severe laws, steadily enforced, would be sufficient against those evils, and would promote marriage.--Samuel Johnson (Boswell: Life of Johnson) A country is in a bad state, which is governed only by laws; because a thousand things occur for which laws cannot provide, and where authority ought to interpose. - Samuel Johnson (Boswell: Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides) Qui custodiet ipsos custodes. Juvenal (loosely translated: "Who watches the watchmen?" literally:" Who will guard the guardians themselves?") So, let me see if I got this right. Judge Moore was thrown out of office and smeared in all the media because he broke the law by displaying the Ten Commandments, but the SF mayor is a hero for breaking the law by passing out invalid wedding licenses to same-sex lovers. I'm surprised there isn't a major earthquake, caused by all the Founding Fathers, and most our ancestors up through the damned Sixties, spinning in their graves. - David C Kifer In Romans 7, St. Paul says, "The law is spiritual." What does that mean? If the law were physical, then it could be satisfied by works, but since it is spiritual, no one can satisfy it unless everything he does springs from the depths of the heart. But no one can give such a heart except the Spirit of God, who makes the person be like the law, so that he actually conceives a heartfelt longing for the law and henceforward does everything, not through fear or coercion, but from a free heart.-- Martin Luther (1483-1546), "Preface to the Letter of St. Paul to the Romans" I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and willingly accepts the penalty by staying in jail in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the very highest respect for law. King, Martin Luther, Jnr. (1929-1968) Morality cannot be legislated, but behavior can be
regulated. Judicial decrees may not change the heart, but
they can restrain the heartless. Two things fill the mind with ever new increasing wonder and awe - the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me. Immanuel Kant Laws and customs may be creative of vice; and should be therefore perpetually under process of observation and correction: but laws and customs cannot be creative of virtue: they may encourage and help to preserve it; but they cannot originate it. Harriet Martineau (1802-1876) In "Words of Women Quotations for Success," by Power Dynamics Publishing, 1997. Say what you will about the Ten Commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them. Henry Lewis Mencken, 1880 - 1956 It is the fundamental theory of all the more recent American law...that the average citizen is half-witted, and hence not to be trusted to either his own devices or his own thoughts.-- H. L. Mencken Laws can discover sin, but not remove it.-- John Milton The observance of the divine laws constitutes the most
effective preventative medicine against disease. The glory of the Gospel is, not that it destroys the law,
but that it makes it cease to be a bondage; not that it
gives us freedom from it, but in it; and the notion of the
Gospel which I have been describing as cold and narrow is,
not that of supposing Christianity a law, but a supposing it
to be scarcely more than a law, and thus leaving us where it
found us . . . They have not merely the promise of grace;
they have its presence. They have not merely the conditional
prospect of a reward; for a blessing, nay, unspeakable,
fathomless, illimitable, infinite, eternal blessings are
poured into their very hearts, even as a first step and an
earnest from God our Saviour, of what He will do for those
who love Him. They "are passed from death unto life," and
are the children of God and heirs of heaven. When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators. -- P.J. O'Rourke The world, indeed, seems to be weary of the just, righteous, holy ways of God, and of that exactness in walking according to His institutions and commands which it will be one day known that He doth require. But the way to put a stop to this declension is not by accommodating the commands of God to the corrupt courses and ways of men. The truths of God and the holiness of His precepts must be pleaded and defended, though the world dislike them here and perish hereafter. His law must not be made to lackey after the wills of men, nor be dissolved by vain interpretations, because they complain they cannot -- indeed, because they will not -- comply with it. Our Lord Jesus Christ came not to destroy the law and the prophets, but to fulfil them, and to supply men with spiritual strength to fulfil them also. It is evil to break the least commandment; but there is a great aggravation of that evil in them that shall teach men so to do.--John Owen (1616-1683), Sermons It is not that we decry the significance of the law. God has established it for a purpose. But the subduing of sin is not its task. God did not design the law for that purpose. It is no dishonor if the law cannot do that which is not its proper task.(Romans 8:3). Thus we experience the faithful, constant preaching of the Word against sin in a church congregation for years on end. Yet we see no real effect of this on the lives of its members. These congregations actually proclaim the power of sin over the dispensation of the law! It is not the letter of The law but the efficacy of the spirit of god that truly matters. -- John Owen That whatsoever Law of God, or Command of His, we find
recorded in the Lawe-booke, in either volume of GODS
Statute, the New Testament or the Old, Remains obligatory to
us, unless we can prove it to be expired, or repealed. Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws.~Plato Under a proper social system, a private individual is legally free to take any action he pleases (so long as he does not violate the rights of others), while a government official is bound by law in his every official act. A private individual may do anything except that which is legally forbidden; a government official may do nothing except that which is legally permitted." -- Ayn Rand, Objectivist Newsletter, December 1963 One of the greatest delusions in the world is the hope that the evils in this world are to be cured by legislation. --Thomas Brackett Reed If we as a nation officially throw Christ off the throne of the nation and of the throne of the universe in our minds - who are we putting in His place? Whose word is going to be our law? - Andrew Rowell Do we need more laws? God forbid! We need more righteousness, more freedom, and more godly men -- and fewer laws. R.J. Rushdoony Now, our increasingly humanistic laws, courts, and legislators are giving us a new morality. They tell us, as they strike down laws resting upon Biblical foundations, that morality cannot be legislated, but what they offer is not only legislated morality but salvation by law, and no Christian can accept this. Wherever we look now, whether with respect to poverty, education, civil rights, human rights, peace, and all things else, we see laws passed designed to save man. Supposedly, these laws are going to give us a society free of prejudice, ignorance, disease, poverty, crime, war, and all other things considered to be evil. These legislative programs add up to one thing: salvation by law." R. J. Rushdoony Man is not answerable to an abstract law, but to God. Behind the law is the Lawgiver. Therefore, to find fault with the law is to find fault with the Lawgiver. The law is not the arbitrary edicts of a capricious despot, but the wise, holy loving precepts of one who is jealous for His glory and for the good of His people. Ernest Reisinger "Law and Gospel" God has given us rules not because He is arbitrary, but because the rules... are fixed in His own character.... Thus, when we sin we break the law of God... in the direction of destroying what we really are. FRANCIS SCHAEFFER It follows from [Samuel] Rutherford's thesis that
citizens have a moral obligation to resist unjust and
tyrannical government. While we must always be subject to
the office of the magistrate, we are not to be subject to
the man in that office who commands that which is contrary
to the Bible. Rutherford suggested that there are three
appropriate levels of resistance: First, he must defend
himself by protest (in contemporary society this would most
often be by legal action); second, he must flee if at all
possible; and third, he may use force, if necessary, to
defend himself. One should not employ force if he may save
himself by flight; nor should one employ flight if he can
save himself and defend himself by protest and the
employment of constitutional means of redress. Rutherford
illustrated this pattern of resistance from the life of
David [fleeing from King Saul] as it is recorded in
the Old Testament. The civil government, as all life, stands
under the law of God...when any [political] office
commands that which is contrary to the Word of God, those
who hold that office abrogate their authority and they are
not be obeyed. Justice is] based on God's written Law,
back through the New Testament to Moses' written Law; and
the content and authority of that written Law is rooted back
to Him who is the final reality. Thus, neither church nor
state were equal to, let alone above, that Law. The base for
Law is not divided, and no one has the right to place
anything, including king, state or church, above the
contents of God's Law. Ignorance of the law excuses no man; not that all men know the law, but because it is an excuse every man will plead, and no man can tell how to confute him. John Selden (1584-1654) Judge Willis: What do you suppose I am on the Bench for,
Mr Smith? Laws are like spiders' webs which, if anything small
falls into them they ensnare it, but large things break
through and escape. The more corrupt the State the more numerous the laws. -- Cornelius Tacitus I came across some of my father's loose sermon notes
slipped into the back of my sixth form chemistry exercise
book. Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.- Henry David Thoreau (1817 &endash; 1862) Any fool can make a rule By Revolution ideas I mean the basic maxims of liberty
and equality, popular sovereingty, social contract, the
artificial reconstruction of society by common consent -
notions which today are venerated as the cornerstone of
constitutional law and the political order....The
consequences of the Revolution ideas cannot be combatted
with any success unless one places himself outside their
influence, on the ground of the anti-revolutionary
principles. This ground is beyond reach, however, so long as
one refuses to acknowledge that the foundation of justice
lies in the law the ordinances of God. Bonald has expressed
this truth in the concise and pregnant words, 'The
Revolution began with the declaration of the rights of man;
it will end only with the declaration of the rights of
God.' A multitude of laws in a country is like a great number of physicians, a sign of weakness and malady.- Voltaire The propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on
a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and
right which Heaven itself has ordained.
The best leader is the one who has the sense to surround himself with outstanding people and self-restraint not to meddle with how they do their jobs. Due to a shortage of devoted followers, the production of great leaders has been discontinued. Without a shepherd, sheep are not a flock. Russian Proverb The supreme quality for leadership is unquestionably integrity. Without it, no real success is possible, no matter whether it is on a section gang, a football field, in an army, or in an office. - Lucille Ball, 1911 - 1989 .People, like sheep, tend to follow a leader -- occasionally in the right direction.-- Alexander Chase Never hold discussions with the monkey when the organ grinder is in the room. - Winston Churchill The man who commands efficiently must have obeyed others in the past, and the man who obeys dutifully is worthy of being some day a commander. --Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC) ... a minority committed to reason, to excellence, to the
high principles of civilization, can make a difference.
Society is not led from the middle, but from the top -- by
the ideas of the thinkers, the discoveries of the explorers,
the creations of the inventors, the words of the
philosophers, the marvels of the builders, the sacrifices of
the pioneers ... rudders are, as a rule, much smaller than
the ships they steer. Leverage matters. Leverage, and whose
hands are on the wheel. The man who wants to lead the orchestra must turn his back on the crowd. James Crook The graveyards are full of indispensable men: De Gaulle Effective leadership is not about making speeches or being liked; leadership is defined by results not attributes. ~ Peter F. Drucker Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it."-- Dwight David Eisenhower To be a leader of men one must turn one's back on men.--- Henry Havelock Ellis, Introduction to HUYSMANS, A Rebours (Against the Grain), 1884. Effective leadership is visionary leadership.~ Mark Victor Hansen There are no office hours for leaders. Cardinal James Gibbons The very essence of leadership is that you have to have vision. You can't blow an uncertain trumpet.--- Theodore Hesburgh The frustrated follow a leader less because of their faith that he is leading them to a promised land than because of their immediate feeling that he is leading them away from their unwanted selves. Surrender to a leader is not a means to an end but a fulfillment. Whither they are led is of secondary importance.-- Eric Hoffer If you hire only those people you understand, the company will never get people better than you are. Always remember that you often find outstanding people among those you don't particularly like.-- Soichiro Honda True leadership would convince people, rather than force them. --David C. Kifer Let me pass! I have to follow them; I am their leader.--Alexandre Auguste Ledru-Rollin, 15 May 1848. Leaders should be the chief repenters. Jack Miller As a leader you should always start with where people are before you try to take them to where you want them to go. ~ Jim Rohnh The world is a perpetual caricature of itself; at every moment it is the mockery and the contradiction of what it is pretending to be. But as it nevertheless intends all the time to be something dignified, at the next moment it corrects and checks and tries to cover up the absurd thing it was; so that a conventional world, a world of masks, is superimposed on the reality, and passes in every sphere of human interest for the reality itself. Humor is the perception of this illusion, whilst the convention continues to be maintained, as if we had not observed its absurdity. -- George Santayana I had the patriotic conviction that, given great leadership of the sort I heard from Winston Churchill in the radio broadcasts to which we listened, there was almost nothing that the British people could not do.- Margaret Thatcher, The Path to Power, Harper Collins,1995, p31 If you've got a message, preach it! The Old Testament prophets did not go out to the highways saying,"Brothers. I want a consensus." They said, "This is my faith and my vision! This is what I passionately believe." And they preached it. We have a message. Go out, preach it, practice it, fight for it - and the day will be ours.-- Margaret Thatcher, speech, Cardiff, 16 April 1979 When you get right down to it, one of the most important tasks of a leader is to eliminate his people's excuse for failure. - Robert Townsend Leadership is the ability to get extraordinary achievement from ordinary people. ~ Brian Tracy I am a leader by default, only because nature does not allow a vacuum.Desmond Tutu (1931-____)In "Christian Science Monitor," 20 Dec 1984. Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion.~ John Welch
If all the year were playing holidays,
Letter writing is the only device for combining solitude with good company. - George Gordon Byron, 1788 - 1824 I have made this a rather long letter because I haven't had time to make it shorter. - Blaise Pascal, 1623 - 1662 Letter writing on the part of a busy man or woman is the quintessence of generosity.- Agnes Repplier, 1855 - 1950 If you want to discover your true opinion of anybody, observe the impression made on you by the first sight of a letter from him. - Arthur Schopenhauer, 1788 - 1860
Liberalism is a disease masquerading as its own cure. If I had to choose between putting a saloon or a liberal church on a corner, I'd choose the saloon every time. People who drink up the pay check in the saloon are less likely to become Pharisees, thinking that they don't need the Great Physician, than those who weekly swill the soporific doctrine of man's goodness. Jay Adams In the United States today, we have more than our share of the nattering nabobs of negativism. --SPIRO AGNEW, Speech, San Diego, 11 Sept 1970. A man who has both feet planted firmly in the air can be safely called a liberal as opposed to the conservative, who has both feet firmly planted in his mouth. Jacques Barzun What all liberals have in common is a touching certainty that they are right. Liberalism is a missionary faith, and proselytising zeal is not normally conducive to sceptical inquiry. Whatever the core values of liberalism, they can surely conflict with one another - and with other goods such as social cohesion. Yet it rarely occurs to liberals to ask themselves whether their values - however vaguely or inconsistently defined - are viable in the long term. - John Gray http://www.newstatesman.com/books.php3?URN=300000090978 A hallmark of modern liberal theology is that the search for truth is more important than the truth itself. Searching for truth is an existential delight, and for a liberal, it save you from having to take a firm position on anything. -- Steven F. Hayward, _The Real Jimmy Carter_, 2004 Liberals of all faiths are often in agreement becuse they don't believe in the same things - Rabbi Jacobs, formerly of Ealing Orthodox Synagogue Post-1960s liberalism has lost its communal sensibility and now talks almost exclusively of autonomy and rights, not obligation or moral accountability. ...it has aggressively labored to devalue society by trying to banish moral and religious discourse from the public arena. Even the famous liberal belief in openness, tolerance and free speech now looks like a discarded belief. Witness all the disinvited speakers, stolen newspapers and current not-very-liberal efforts to silence Dr. Laura Schlessinger and derecognize campus Christian groups.--John Leo, 2000 O Lord, forasmuch as without thee, we are not able to
doubt thee, It is my belief, as a friendly neutral in all such high and ghostly matters, that the body of doctrine known as Modernism is completely incompatible, not only with anything rationally describable as Christianity, but also with anything deserving to pass as religion in general. Religion, if it is to retain any genuine significance, can never be reduced to a series of sweet attitudes, possible to anyone not actually in jail for felony. It is, on the contrary, a corpus of powerful and profound convictions, many of them not open to logical analysis. . . .What the Modernists have done . . . [is] to get rid of all the logical difficulties of religion, and yet preserve a generally pious cast of mind. It is a vain enterprise. What they have left, once they have achieved their imprudent scavenging, is hardly more than a row of hollow platitudes, as empty [of] psychological force and effect as so many nursery rhymes. . . . Religion is something else again-in Henrik Ibsen's phrase, something far more deep-down-diving and mud-upbringing. Dr. Machen tried to impress that obvious fact upon his fellow adherents of the Geneva Muhammad [i.e., Calvin]. He failed-but he was undoubtedly right.-- H. L. Mencken, "Dr. Fundamentalis", an obituary of Rev. J. Gresham Machen, Baltimore Evening Sun (January 18, 1937), 2nd Section, p. 15. Previous civilizations have been overthrown from without by the incursion of barbarian hordes; ours has dreamed up its own dissolution in the minds of our intellectual elites. Not bolshevism, which Stalin liquidated along with the old Bolsheviks; not Nazism, which perished with Hitler in his Berlin bunker; not fascism, which was left hanging upside down from a lamppost, along with Mussolini and his mistress&emdash;none of these, history will record, was responsible for bringing down the darkness on our civilization, but liberalism. A solvent rather than a precipitate, a sedative rather than a stimulant, a slough rather than a precipice; blurring the edges of truth, the definition of virtue, the shape of beauty; a cracked bell, a mist, a death wish. -- Macolm Muggeridge, "The Great Liberal Death Wish", 1977 For thirty, forty, fifty years I have resisted to the
best of my powers the spirit of liberalism in religion.
Never did Holy Church need champions against it more sorely
than now when, alas! it is an error over spreading, as a
snare, the whole earth . . . Liberalism in religion is the
doctrine that there is no positive truth in religion, but
that one creed is as good as another . . . It is
inconsistent with any recognition of any religion, as true.
It teaches that all are to be tolerated, for all are matters
of opinion. Revealed religion is not a truth, but a
sentiment and a taste; not an objective fact, not
miraculous; and it is the right of each individual to make
it say just what strikes his fancy . . . Since then,
religion is so personal a peculiarity and so private a
possession, we must of necessity ignore it in the
intercourse of man with man . . . Religion is in no sense
the bond of society . . . Instead of the Church's authority
and teaching, they would substitute first of all a universal
and a thoroughly secular education . . . As to Religion, it
is a private luxury, which a man may have if he will; but
which of course he must pay for, and which he must not
obtrude upon others, or indulge in to their annoyance. With money comes power over the world. Men are freed from drudgery, women from exploitation. Businesses can be started, homes built, communities formed, religions practiced, educations pursued. But liberals aren't very interested in such real and material freedoms. They have a more innocent - not to say toddlerlike - idea of freedom. Liberals want the freedom to put anything into their mouths, to say bad words and to expose their private parts in art museums. That liberals aren't enamored of real freedom may have something to do with responsibility - that cumbersome backpack which all free men have to lug on life's aerobic nature hike. The second item in the liberal creed, after self-righteousness, is unaccountability. Liberals have invented whole college majors - psychology, sociology, women's studies - to prove that nothing is anybody's fault. No one is fond of taking responsibility for his actions, but consider how much you'd have to hate free will to come up with a political platform that advocates killing unborn babies but not convicted murderers. A callous pragmatist might favor abortion AND capital punishment. -- --P. J. O'Rourke ...I have long suspected that there is a parallel between
the attitudes of many liberals today and the way the French
took shelter under the American nuclear umbrella during the
Cold War while simultaneously gratifying themselves with
luxuriant outbursts of contempt against us. Such liberals, I
think, are not quite so unhappy as they profess to be that
there is a force in this country whose very existence helps
set limits to libertine tendencies that they themselves
worry about, especially when they have children, but that
they do not know how to restrain and would lack the courage
to fight even if they were in command of the necessary
arguments. And so they rely on the 'nuclear umbrella' of the
Christian right, while denouncing it all the more loudly as
they quietly benefit from its protection. The majority of Irish people have had enough of
intolerance dressed up as liberalism. Liberal' is what socialists call themselves when they don't want you to understand that they plan to take away your rights, your property, and eventually your life. -- L. Neil Smith & Aaron Zelman, via Alexander Hope One of the more frequently recurring buzzwords of the
contemporary anointed [liberals] is "complex", often
said with a sense of superiority toward those who disagree
with them--the latter being labelled "simplistic." The real
world, of course, is more complex than any statement that
anyone can make about it, whether that statement is in three
words or in three volumes ... Complex phenomena may, of
course, also have complex causes. But the _a priori _ dogma
that they cannot have simple causes is part of the "complex"
complex. It is one more way of seeming to argue, without
actually making any argument. It is also one more example of
the presumption of superior wisdom and/or virtue that is at
the heart of the vision of the anointed ... Merely labelling
an analysis "oversimplified" on _a priori _ grounds puts the
cart before the horse, by evading responsibility for first
demonstrating the falsity of its conclusions. Liberalism is totalitarianism with a human face. Thomas Sowell Liberals seem to assume that, if you don't believe in their particular political solutions, then you don't really care about the people that they claim to want to help. -- Dr. Thomas Sowell But who is Christ for us?... To talk of a Father God who has a divine-human son by a virgin woman is a mythology that our generation would never have created and, obviously, could not use. To speak of a Father God so enraged by human evil that he requires propitiation for our sins that we cannot pay and thus demands the death of the divine-human son as a guilt offering is a ludicrous idea to our century. The sacrificial concept that focuses on the saving blood of Jesus that somehow washes me clean, so popular in evangelical and fundamentalist circles, is by and large repugnant to us today. To see human life as fallen from a pristine and good creation necessitating a diving rescue by the God-man is not to understand the most elementary aspect of our evolutionary history. To view human life as depraved or as victimized by original sin is to literalize a premodern anthropology and a premodern psychology." John Shelley Spong, "Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism" (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1991) p. 236. Almost all modern liberal thought begins with the bedrock assumption that humans are basically good. Within this moral horizon something such as terrorism cannot really exist, except as a manifestation of injustice, or unfairness, or lack of decent social services. -- Adam Wolfson
It is easier to believe a lie that one has heard a thousand times than to believe a fact that no one has heard before. False in one thing, false in everything. --Legal maxim People everywhere enjoy believing things that they know are not true. It spares them the ordeal of thinking for themselves and taking responsibility for what they know. --Brooks Atkinson (1894-1984) _Once Around the Sun_ [1951], "February 2nd" Lying to ourselves is more deeply ingrained than lying to others.-- Dostoevsky The important thing is to stop lying to yourself. A man who lies to himself, and believes his own lies, becomes unable to recognize truth, either in himself or in anyone else, and he ends up losing respect for himself as well as for others. When he has no respect for anyone, he can no longer love and, in order to divert himself, having no love in him he yields to his impulses, indulges in the lowest forms of pleasure, and behaves in the end like an animal, in satisfying his vices. And it all comes from lying- lying to others and to yourself. FYDOR DOSTOEVESKY, The Brothers Karamazov Man's mind is so formed that it is far more susceptible to falsehood than to truth. ~ Erasmus, Praise of Folly, ch.45 It is in the ability to deceive oneself that one shows the greatest talent.---Anatole France Well, sure, the government lies, and newspapers lie, but in a democracy they aren't the same lies. -- Alexis Gilliland Lie not, neither to thyself, nor man, nor God. It is for cowards to lie.--George Herbert Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle which fits them all. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr Dare to be true: nothing can need a lie; The man who fears no truths has nothing to fear from lies. Thomas Jefferson He who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much
easier to do it a second and third time, till at length it
becomes habitual; he tells lies without attending to it, and
truth without the world's believing him. This falsehood of
the tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves
all its good dispositions. He [Johnson] would not allow his servant to say he was not at home when he really was. "A servant's strict regard for the truth must be weakened by such a practice. A philosopher may know that it is merely a form of denial; but few servants are such nice distinguishers. If I accustom a servant to tell a lie for -me-, have I not reason to apprehend that hewill tell many lies for -himself-. Samuel Johnson (Boswell: Life of Johnson) Men who cannot deceive others are very often successful at deceiving themselves. - Samuel Johnson: Rambler #31 Of all the liars in the world, sometimes the worst are your own fears. Rudyard Kipling Poor Bonar can't bear being called a liar. Now, I don't mind.--David Lloyd George, letter, 22 October 1923, on the new Prime Minister, Andrew Bonar Law. Presumably one thought he was not a liar while the other knew it was fair comment. Lying is a hateful and accursed vice. We have no other tie upon one another, but our word. If we did but discover the horror and consequence of it, we should pursue it with fire and sword, and more justly than other crimes.--Montaigne If falsehood, like truth, had but one face, we would be on more equal terms. For we would consider the contrary of what the liar said to be certain. But the opposite of truth has a hundred thousand faces and an infinite field. -- Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1533-1592) People do not believe lies because they have to, but because they want to. --Malcolm Muggeridge The most common sort of lie is the one uttered to one's self. --Nietzsche The truth may be out there, but lies are inside your head.--Terry Pratchett, _Hogfather_, The gain of lying is, not to be trusted of any, nor to be believed when we speak the truth. --Sir Walter Raleigh People think that a liar gains a victory over his victim. What I've learned is that a lie is an act of self-abdication, because one surrender's one's reality to the person to whom one lies, making that person one's master, condemning oneself from then on to faking the sort of reality that person's view requires to be faked. And if one gains the immediate purpose of the lie--the price one pays is the destruction of that which the gain was intended to serve. The man who lies to the world, is the world's slave from then on.-- Hank Rearden, a hero in Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged, 1957 Part Three, "A is A", Chapter IV, "Anti-Life" The lie is the death of man, his temporal and his eternal death. The lie kills nations. Through their lies, the most powerful empires of the world were laid waste. History knows of no more unsettling spectacle than the judgment which comes to pass when the men of an advanced culture have rejected the truth, and are now swallowed up in a sea of lies. As was the case with fading pagan antiquity, where this happened, religion and law, poetry and philosophy life in marriage and family, in the state and society, in short, one sphere of life after another, fell sacrifice to the power and curse of the lie. Where man can no longer bear the truth, he cannot live without the lie. Where man, even when dying, lies to himself and others, the terrible dissolution of his culture is held up as a glorious ascent, and decline is viewed as an advance, the like of which has never beenexperienced.- Hermann Sasse's Christ and His Church -- Union and Confession, Concordia Publishing House, #S14934, page 1 Oh what a tangled web we weave, Lying is like alcoholism. You are always recovering. -Steven Soderbergh The simple step of a courageous individual is not to take part in the lie. One word of truth outweighs the world. -- Alexander Solzhenitsyn. The cruelest lies are often told in silence. --Robert Louis Stevenson, 1881 You don't tell deliberate lies, but sometimes you have to be evasive. --Margaret Thatcher
It may be that your whole purpose in life is simply to serve as a warning to others. Life would be so much easier if everyone read the manual. All the world's a stage and most of us are desperately unrehearsed. Between the wish and the thing life lies waiting. Life can only be understood backwards but it must be lived forwards Work as if you don't need the money, Life is like an onion. You peel it off one layer at a time and sometimes you weep. Life is a Lambourghini: it goes too fast and costs too much. Enjoy life ... This is not a rehearsal. Life is a ribbon. Are you tying yours in knots or bows? Life is a bubble, Life is much like Christmas--you are more apt to get what you expect than what you want. Life is an onion and one peels it crying. - French proverb The world is a pregnant woman.---Hausa proverb from Nigeria Looking at yourself in a mirror isn't exactly a study of life. Lauren Bacall (1924-____) In "Daily Mail" (London), 1 Nov 1990. I think your whole life shows in your face and you should be proud of that.Lauren Bacall (1924-____)In "Daily Telegraph" (London), 2 Mar 1988. Life pursues me like a fury. Everything, at all times, I am feeling, thinking, hoping, hating, loving, cheering. It is impossible to escape.-- W. N. P. Barbellion Life is rather like a tin of sardines - we're all of us looking for the key.- Alan Bennett Life begets life. Energy creates energy. It is by
spending oneself that one becomes rich. Many factors contribute to who we become as human beings:
our genes, our maturation, our unique biological potentials
and limitations, our life experiences and the conclusions we
draw from them, the knowledge and information available to
us, and, of course, our premises or philosophical beliefs,
and the thinking we choose to do or not to do. And even this
list is an oversimplification. The truth, is we are far from
understanding everything that goes into shaping the persons
we become, and it is arrogant and stupid to imagine that we
do.- Existence is a strange bargain. Life owes us little; we
owe it everything. The only true happiness comes from
squandering ourselves for a purpose. Life is one long process of getting tired. --Samuel Butler If life was fair, Elvis would be alive and all the impersonators would be dead. Johnny Carson (1925-____) How far you go in life depends on you being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and the strong. Because someday in life you will have been all of these. -George Washington Carver Too much sanity may be madness. And maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be!- Miguel de Cervantes (1547 1616) If life had a second edition, how I would correct the proofs.John Clare (1793-1864) Letter to a friend; in "John Clare: A Life," by J. W. Tibble and Anne Tibble. Life is short. Forgive quickly. Kiss slowly. --Robert Doisneau It is not what I do that matters, but what a sovereign God chooses to do through me. God does not want worldly successes, He wants me. He wants my heart in submission to Him. Life is not just a few years to spend on self indulgence and career advancement. It is a privilege, a responsibility, a stewardship to be lived according to a much higher calling, God's calling. This alone gives true meaning to life. ELIZABETH DOLE You ask: what is the meaning or purpose of life? I can only answer with another question: do you think we are wise enough to read God's mind? - Freeman Dyson The pleasures of youth are flowers but of May; One person who has mastered life is better than a thousand persons who have mastered only the contents of books, but no one can get anything out of life without God.-- Meister Eckhart, c. 13th-14thC Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.-- Albert Einstein As soon as there is life, there is danger.... Ralph Waldo Emerson Life is a library owned by an author. It has a few books which he wrote himself, but most of them were written for him. - Harry Emerson Fosdick (1878-1969) Life's tragedy is that we get old too soon and wise too late.~Benjamin Franklin In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: It goes on.... Robert Frost, (1874-1963 We are born crying, live complaining, and die disappointed. --Thomas Fuller, M.D. (1654-1734) We learn the rope of life by untying its knots.~ Gandhi Life is ever The journey of life is like a man riding a bicycle. We know he got on the bicycle and started to move. We know that at some point he will stop and get off. We know that if he stops moving and does not get off he will fall off. - William Golding (1911-1993) In "An Uncommon Scold," by Abby Adams, 1989. God often gives nuts to toothless people. -Matt Groening Thou hast no life to lose, because thou hast given it already to Christ, nor can man take away that without God's leave.--William Gurnall As the light changed from red to green to amber and back to red again, I sat there thinking about life. Was it nothing more than a lot of honking and yelling? Sometimes it seemed that way.~Jack Handey Momma always said 'life is like a box of chocolates. You
never know what you're gonna get.' The man who has begun to live more seriously within begins to live more simply without.Ernest Hemingway (1889-1961) In "The Peter Pyramid," by Laurence J. Peter. The true meaning of life is to plant trees under whose shade you do not expect to sit ~ Nelson Henderson ,1860 You don't want to work; you want to live like a king Life is made up of sobs, sniffles and smiles, with sniffles predominating. - O. Henry Error, accident, and chaos are persistent principles of the universe. --Imperial Historical Annals, (chapter heading), _Dune: House Corrino_, Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson Life cannot be captured in a few axioms. And that is just what I keep trying to do. But it won't work, for life is full of endless nuances and cannot be captured in just a few formulae. - Etty Hillesum (1914 &endash; 1943) Any organisation is like a septic tank. The really big chunks rise to the top.~John Imhoff It was not . . . that she was unaware of the frayed and ragged edges of life. She would merely iron them out with a firm hand and neatly hem them down. P. D. James (1920-____) The greatest use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it. William James The main of life is ... composed of small incidents and petty occurrences: of wishes for objects not remote, and grief for disappointments of no fatal consequence; of insect vexations, which sting us and fly away; impertinecies, which buzz a while about us, and are heard no more; of meteorous pleasures, which dance before us and are dissipated; of compliments, which glide off the soul like other music, and are forgotten by him that gave, and him that received them.--Samuel Johnson: Rambler #68 We are all prompted by the same motives, all deceived by the same fallacies, all animated by hope, obstructed by danger, entangled by desire, and seduced by pleasure.-- Samuel Johnson: Rambler #60 The truth is, that no man is much regarded by the rest of the world. He that considers how little he dwells upon the condition of others will learn how little the attention of others is attracted by himself. While we see multitudes passing before us, of whom perhaps not one appears to deserve our notice or excite our sympathy, we should remember, that we likewise are lost in the same throng, that the eye which happens to glance upon us is turned in a moment on him that follows us, and that the utmost which we can reasonably hope or fear, is to fill a vacant hour with prattle and be forgotten. - Samuel Johnson: Rambler #159 Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment.... Samuel Johnson Human life is everywhere a state in which much is to be endured, and little to be enjoyed. -- Samuel Johnson: Rasselas [said by the character Imlac] Every man lives behind bars, which he carries within him. --Franz Kafka (1883-1924) _Encounter_ [1971], "Conversations with Kafka" The means by which we live have outdistanced the ends for which we live. Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men. --Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) _Strength to Love_ [1963] Life is something to do when you can't get to sleep. Fran Lebowitz The game of life is not so much in holding a good hand as in playing a poor hand well.-- H. T. Leslie The process of living seems to consist in coming to realize truths so ancient and simple that, if stated, they sound like barren platitudes. They cannot sound otherwise to those who have not had the relevant experience: that is why there is no real teaching of such truths possible and every generation starts from scratch. C S Lewis - Letters, May 1939 I walk in wonders beyond myself. --C. S. Lewis Life is real! Life is earnest! And the grave is not its
goal; This life therefore is not righteousness but growth in righteousness; not health but healing, not being but becoming, not rest but exercise. We are not what we shall be but we are growing toward it; the process is not yet finished but it is going on; this is not the end but it is the road. All does not yet gleam in glory but all is being purified. MARTIN LUTHER Better to love God and die unknown than to love the world and be a hero; better to be content with poverty than to die a slave to wealth; better to have taken some risks and lost than to have done nothing and succeeded at it.... Erwin W. Lutzer The great mystery is not that we should have been thrown down here at random between the profusion of matter and that of the stars; it is that from our very prison we should draw, from our own selves, images powerful enough to deny our nothingness.- Andre Malraux . . the circumference of life cannot be rightly drawn until the center is set. Benjamin E. Mays (1895-1984) Life is managed; it is not cured. Phil McGraw If you don't like life, its the way you're livin' A little less takin', a bit more givin'; A little less hatin', a little more lovin'; A little more helpin', not o much shovin'; A little more smilin', not so much strife, And soon you will be in love with life.--- J. W. T. Meehan Life's a voyage that's homeward bound. --Herman Melville (1819-1891) The value of life lies, not in the length of days, but in the use we make of them: a man may live long, yet live very little. Satisfaction in life depends not on the number of your years, but on your will."--Michel de Montaigne The only ultimate disaster that can befall us, I have come to realize, is to feel ourselves at home here on earth.... Malcolm Muggeridge (1903-1990) St. Teresa of Avila described our life in this world as like a night at a second-class hotel. Malcolm Muggeridge Life is filled with meaning as soon as Jesus Chrst enters into it.-- Stephen Neill in The Lion Christian Quotation Collection, 1997 It's not just the ups and downs that make life difficult. It's the jerks. Alfred E. Neuman Most of life is routine - dull and grubby, but routine is the momentum that keeps a man going. If you wait for inspiration you'll be standing on the corner after the parade is a mile down the street.--- Ben Nicholas Life is a hard fight, a struggle, a wrestling with the
principle of evil, hand to hand, foot to foot. Every inch of
the way is disputed. The night is given us to take breath,
to pray, to drink deep at the fountain of power. The day, to
use the strength which has been given us, to go forth to
work with it till the evening. Most people get a fair amount of fun out of their lives, but on balance life is suffering, and only the very young or very foolishimagine otherwise. -George Orwell Autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful. A man who gives a good account of himself is probably lying, since any life when viewed from the inside is simply a series of defeats.-George Orwell It is arrogance to expect that life will always be music...Harmony, like a following breeze at sea, is the exception. In a world where most things wind up broken or lost, our lot is to tack and tune. Harvey Oxenhorn Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song, The truest end of life is to know that life never ends. - William Penn God always has another custard pie up his sleeve. -Lynn Redgrave in "Georgy Girl" Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction. - Antoine de Saint-Exupery A baby is God's opinion that life should go on. Carl Sandburg (1878-1967) Life is like a ten-speed bike. Most of us have gears we never use. "Peanuts", Charles M. Schulz There must be more to life than having everything. Maurice Sendak As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters. Seneca (B.C. 3-65 A.D.) The trip doesn't exist that can set you beyond the reach
of cravings, fits of temper, or fears. If it did, the human
race wold be off there in a body. The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together. --William Shakespeare (1564-1616)_All's Well That Ends Well_ [1602-1604], Act IV, Scene III, Line 83 Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player Life is as tedious as a twice-told tale Look at everything as though you were seeing it for the first time or the last time. Then your time on earth will be filled with glory. Betty Smith Life improves slowly and goes wrong fast, and only catastrophe is clearly visible. - Edward Teller (1908 &endash; 2003) The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. Henry David Thoreau, Walden(1854),I,Economy All men should strive to learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why.--James Thurber (1894-1961)_Fables for Our Time_ [1940], "The Shore and the Sea" The only significance of life consists in helping to establish the kingdom of God. LEO TOLSTOY The problem of the meaning of life is intractable, but life's purpose becomes very simple when we ask ourselves what we should do. -Tolstoy There is still vitality under the winter snow, even though to the casual eye it seems to be dead. ~ Agnes Sligh Turnbull, The Rolling Years (1936) Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life. Mark Twain
Light is shed upon the righteous and joy on the upright in heart. NIV Ps. 97:11 Even in darkness light dawns for the upright, for the gracious and compassionate and righteous man. Ps. 112:4 NIV Enable with perpetual light You can't have a light without a dark to stick it in. - Arlo Guthrie (1947 &endash; ) The trained mind outs the upright soul,
God gave people a mouth that closes and ears that don't, which should tell us something. The first service one owes to others in the fellowship consists in listening to them. Just as love of God begins in listening to His Word, so the beginning of love for the brethren is learning to listen to them. It is God's love for us that He not only gives us His Word but lends us His ear. So it is His work that we do for our brother when we learn to listen to him.... Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945), Life Together Many people are looking for an ear that will listen. They do not find it among Christians, because these Christians are talking where they should be listening. But he who can no longer listen to his brother will soon be no longer listening to God, either; he will be doing nothing but prattle in the presence of God, too. This is the beginning of the death of the spiritual life, and in the end there will be nothing left but spiritual chatter and clerical condescension arrayed in pious words... never really speaking to others.... Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945), Life Together Listening, not imitation, may be the sincerest form of flattery. . . . If you want to influence someone, listen to what he says. . . . When he finishes talking, ask him about any points that you do not understand. Joyce Brothers (1928-____) I'll defend to the death your right to say that, but I never said I'd listen to it! - Tom Galloway I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen.Ernest Hemingway (1889-1961) Many people may listen, but few people actually hear.... Harvey Mackay, United Features syndicated column No one really listens to anyone else, and if you try it for a while you will see why. - Mignon McLaughlin A good listener is not only popular everywhere, but after a while he gets to know something. - Wilson Mizner, 1876 - 1933 You cannot truly listen to anyone and do anything else at the same time. - Dr. M. Scott Peck If you want to be listened to, you should put in time listening. - Marge Piercy Know how to listen and you will profit even from those who talk badly. -- Plutarch One of the best ways to persuade others is with your ears -- by listening to them. - Dean Rusk (1909-____)
Someone who thinks logically is a nice contrast to the real world. Ockham's razor is so sharp, I bought the whole argument A person usually has two reasons to doing something, All generalisations are wrong including this one. Reason itself is fallible, and this fallibility must find a place in our logic. - Nicola Abbagnano (1900 &endash; 1990) The logic of words should yield to the logic of realities. -Louis Brandeis (1856-1941) "DeSanto vs. Pennsylvania," 1926. Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions. - GK Chesterton Men are apt to mistake the strength of their feeling for the strength of their argument. The heated mind resents the chill touch and relentless scrutiny of logic. William Ewart Gladstone Sir, you are giving a reason for it, but that will not make it right. -- Samuel Johnson (Boswell: Life of Johnson) You can use logic to justify almost anything. That's its power--and its flaw. --Kathryn Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) _Star Trek: Voyager_, "Prime Factors" [Stardate: 48642.5] The fact that logic cannot satisfy us awakens an almost insatiable hunger for the irrational. --A.N. Wilson, 1989
The difference between solitude and loneliness is the quality of the company we keep. When I fancied that I stood alone I was really in the
ridiculous position of being backed up by all of
Christendom. What loneliness is more lonely than distrust? George Eliot Loneliness is the way by which destiny endeavors to lead man to himself.--Hermann Hesse (1877-1962)_Reflections_ [1974], #196 Loneliness is the first thing which God's eye named, not good. John Milton (1608-1674) People are lonely because they build walls instead of bridges. Joseph Fort Newton (1878-1949) Man is a gregarious animal, and much more so in his mind
than in his body. He may like to go alone for a walk, but he
hates to stand alone in his opinions. Loneliness is the most terrible poverty. - Mother Teresa Language has created the word loneliness to express the pain of being alone, and the word solitude to express the glory of being alone. --Paul Tillich
His subject thou art whom thou crownest in thy heart, and not whom thou flatterest with thy lips.-- William Gurnall Consider some of the serious implications of Jesus'
lordship: Christ is either Lord of all, or He is not Lord at all. - J. HUDSON TAYLOR If Christ does not reign over the mundane events in our lives, He does not reign at all. Dr. Paul Tripp
Winning may not be everything, but losing has little to recommend it. - Dianne Feinstein Life's greatest tragedy is to lose God and not to miss him. F. W. Norwood Nothing is really lost by a life of sacrifice; everything is lost by failure to obey God's call. HENRY P. LIDDON Men understand the worth of blessings only when they have lost them. --Titus Maccius Plautus (254-184 BC) _The Captives_ [3rd century BC)
If you meet somebody who tells you that he loves you more than anybody in the whole wide world, don't trust him. It means he experiments. Love means having to say you're sorry every five minutes. God must love crazy people; Love is a decision - not an emotion Never discuss love with a tennis player, it means nothing to them. Giving someone all your love is never an assurance that they'll love you back. Don't expect love in return, just wait for it to grow in their hearts, but if it doesn't, be content it grew in yours. Love makes a house a home. Love is what's in the room with you at Christmas if you stop opening presents and listen,- Bobby - age 5 If you want to learn to love better, you should start with a friend who you hate, - Nikka - age 6 I know my older sister loves me because she gives me all her old clothesand has to go out and buy new ones.- Lauren - age 4 Love is when your husband hands you the remote control when you walk into the room. The single desire that dominated my search for delight was simply to love and to be loved. --Augustine, The Confessions I asked God to take away my pride and God said, "No." The single desire that dominated my search for delight was simply to love and to be loved. --Augustine, The Confessions If they can see you love them, you can say anything to them. Richard Baxter I had everything, from flights on concord to the best hotels. Everything but love. And I was very lonely. Boris Becker Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods
drown it. Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.-- 1Cor. 13:4-8. Human love has little regard for truth. It makes the truth relative, since nothing, not even the truth, must come between it and the beloved person. Human love desires the other person, his company, his answering love, but it does not serve him. On the contrary, it continues to desire even when it seems to be serving. There are two marks, both of which are one and the same thing, that manifest the difference between spiritual and human love: Human love cannot tolerate the dissolution of a fellowship that has become false for the sake of genuine fellowship, and human love cannot love an enemy, that is, one who seriously and stubbornly resists it. Both spring from the same source: human love is by its very nature desire - desire for human community. So long as it can satisfy this desire in some way, it will not give it up, even for the sake of truth, even for the sake of genuine love for others. But where it can no longer expect its desire to be fulfilled, there it stops short - namely, in the face of an enemy. There it turns into hatred, contempt, and calumny. Dietrich Bonhoffer from "Life Together" Know this: though love is weak and hate is strong, Yet hate is short, and love is very long. Kenneth Boulding If ever two were one, then surely we. .Christ's love is like his name, and that is Wonderful, Isa. ix. 6; yea, it is so wonderful, that it is supra omnem creaturam, ultra omnem measuram, contra omnem naturam, above all creatures, beyond all measure, contrary to all nature. It is above all creatures, for it is above the angels, and therefore above all others. It is beyond all measure, for time did not begin it, and time shall never end it; place doth not bound it, sin doth not exceed it, no estate, no age, no sex is denied it, tongues cannot express it, understandings cannot conceive it: and it is contrary to all nature; for what nature can love where it is hated? What nature can forgive where it is provoked? What nature can offer reconcilement where it receiveth wrong? What nature can heap up kindness upon contempt, favour upon ingratitude, mercy upon sin? And yet Christ's love hath led him to all this; so that well may we spend all our days in admiring and adoring of this wonderful love, and be always ravished with the thoughts of it. - THOMAS BROOKS ..when we promise to love we really mean that we promise to honour a contract. -- Anthony Burgess We are continually tormented until God delivers us from misery and anguish by the remedy of His own love towards us. - John Calvin Absence is to love what wind is to fire; it extinguishes
the small, it inflames the great. If I am afraid to speak the truth lest I lose affection, or lest the one concerned should say, "You do not understand", or because I fear to lose my reputation for kindness; if I put my own good name before the other's highest good, then I know nothing of Calvary love. If I am content to heal a hurt slightly, saying peace, peace, where there is no peace; if I forget the poignant words, "Let love be without dissimulation" and blunt the edge of truth, speaking not right things but smooth things, then I know nothing of Calvary love. Amy Carmichael One can give without loving, but one cannot love without giving.... Amy Carmichael (1867-1951) The way to love anything is to realize that it might be
lost. They have invented a phrase, a phrase that is a black and
white contradiction in two words - "free love" - as if a
lover ever had been, or ever could be, free. It is the
nature of love to bind itself, and the institution of
marriage merely paid the average man the compliment of
taking him at his word. The Bible tells us to love our neighbours, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people. G. K. Chesterton Love means to love what is unlovable or it is no love at all. ~G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936) We should measure affection, not like youngsters by the ardor of its passion, but by its strength and constancy. - Marcus Tullius Cicero, 106 - 43 BC All men, even the most surly are influenced by affection ~Samuel Taylor Coleridge ( 1772-1834) We are each of us angels with only one wing. And we can only fly embracing each other.-- Luciano de Crescenzo Love is shown in your deeds, not in your words.--Jerome Cummings Self love, the all natural opiate. Kevin Lomax: What about love? The biggest disease this day and age is that of people feeling unloved.--Diana, Princess of Wales (1961 &endash; 1997) Love a man, even in his sin, for that love is a likeness
of the divine love, and is the summit of love on earth. With love one can live even without happiness. --Fyodor Dostoyevsky The love we have in our youth is superficial compared to
the love that an old man has for his old wife. And at the end of the world, when the church of Christ shall be settled in its last, and most complete, and its eternal state, and all common gifts, such as convictions and illuminations, and all miraculous gifts, shall be eternally at an end, yet then divine love shall not fail, but shall be brought to its most glorious perfection in every individual member of the ransomed church above. Then, in every heart, that love which now seems as but a spark, shall be kindled to a bright and glowing flame, and every ransomed soul shall be as it were in a blaze of divine and holy love, and shall remain and grow in this glorious perfection and blessedness through all eternity! Jonathan Edwards, Charity and Its Fruits We are under greater obligations to love a more lovely being than a less lovely; and if a being be infinitely excellent and lovely, our obligations to love him are therein infinitely great.... The unworthiness of sin or opposition to God rises and is great in proportion to the dignity of the object and inferiority of the subject; but on the contrary, the value of respect rises in proportion to the value of the subject… J.EDWARDS Love is the sum of all virtue, and love disposes us to do good. JONATHAN EDWARDS The art of love ... is largely the art of persistence.Albert Ellis There is no reciprocity. Men love women, women love children and children love hamsters. - Alice Thomas Ellis To be a leader of men one must turn one's back on men. -- Havelock Ellis In the silence of night I have often wished for just a
few words of love from one man, rather than the applause of
thousands of people. The poets themselves said, that amor Deum gubernat, that love governed God. And, as Nazianzen well speaks, this love of God, this dulcis tyrannus, &emdash;this sweet tyrant,&emdash;did overcome him when he was upon the cross. There were no cords could have held him to the whipping-post but those of love; no nails have fastened him to the cross but those of love. THOMAS GOODWIN He that hath love in his breast hath spurs in his side. George Herbert Love is that liquor sweet and most divine Divine love is a sacred flower, which in its early bud is happiness, and in its full bloom is heaven. --Eleanor Louisa Hervey (1811- ) It is easier to love humanity than to love your neighbour. Eric Hoffer The most precious possession that ever comes to a man in this world is a woman's heart. Josiah G. Holland The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved - loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves. Victor Hugo Love doesn't make the world go 'round. Love is what makes the ride worthwhile.--Franklin P. Jones The true healing of the soul is always through the birth
of love. Before a soul loves, it lives only to itself; as
soon as love is born it lives beyond itself and finds its
life in the object of its love. It is Christ who first
reveals the full measure of love, who makes us seethe one
adequate Object of love, and who forges within our human
spirits the invisible bonds of a love that binds us forever
to Him who so loved us. Here in Him - "a Man loving all the
world, a God dying for mankind" - we see that we are
infinitely beloved, that the foundations of an eternal
Friendship are laid, that God is infinitely prone to love,
and that true love spares nothing for the sake of what it
loves - "O miraculous and eternal Godhead suffering on a
Cross for me! Whoever loves much, does much. ... Thomas ý Kempis (1380-1471), Of the Imitation of Christ, I.xv. [1418] Only when it is a duty to love, only then is love eternally and happily secured against despair. Kierkegaard Never cease loving a person, and never give up hope for him, for even the prodigal son who had fallen most low, could still be saved; the bitterest enemy and also he who was your friend could again be your friend; love that has grown cold can kindle again. --Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855 The reigning cliche of the day is that in order to love others one must first learn to love oneself. This formulation -- love thyself, then thy neighbor -- is a license for unremitting self-indulgence, because the quest for self-love is endless. By the time you have finally learned to love yourself, you'll find yourself playing golf at Leisure World. -- Charles Krauthammer in _Time_ magazine, 28 June 1993 Love is a pearl of purest hue, Love is a gift. You can't buy it, you can't find it, someone has to give it to you. Learn to be receptive of that gift.-- Kurt Langner When I have learnt to love God better than my earthly dearest, I shall love my earthly dearest better than I do now.... When first things are put first, second things are not suppressed but increased. C.S. Lewis Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person's ultimate good as far as it can be obtained.--C S Lewis. The Problem of Pain Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up save in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket--safe, dark, motionless, airless--it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable. C.S. Lewis When I have learnt to love God better than my earthly dearest, I shall love my earthly dearest better than I do now.... When first things are put first, second things are not suppressed but increased. - C.S. Lewis , letter: 8 Nov 1952 Affection is responsible for nine-tenths of whatever solid and durable happiness there is in our lives. - Clive Staples Lewis, The Four Loves Only love can be divided endlessly and still not diminish. - Anne Morrow Lindbergh, 1906 - 2001 Love endures only when the lovers love many things together and not merely each other. Walter Lippman (09/23/1889 &endash; 12/14/1974) One ought to love one's neighbour with a love as chaste as that of a bridegroom for his bride. In this case all faults are concealed and covered over and only the virtues are seen. -- Luther's Tabletalk No. 217 Do you think you love your children better than He who made them? Is not your love what it is because He put it into your heart first? Have you not often been cross with them? Sometimes unjust to them? Whence came the returning love that rose from unknown depths in your being, and swept away the anger and the injustice? You did not create that love. Probably you were not good enough to send for it by prayer. But it came. God sent it. He makes you love your children.George Macdonald (1824-1905) Love is the only fire that is hot enough to melt the iron obstinacy of a creatures's will. Alexander MacLaren (1826-1910) True love isn't so much a dreamy feeling that you have as it is an enduring commitment to give sacrificially - even, or perhaps especially, when you don't feel like it. - William R. Mattox, Jr. In the arithmetic of love, one plus one equals everything, and two minus one equals nothing. Mignon McLaughlin Love, to the inferior man, remains almost wholly a physical matter. The heroine he most admires is the one who offers the grossest sexual provocation; the hero who makes his wife roll her eyes is a perambulating phallus.-- H. L. Mencken Be strong, live happy, and love, but first of all Heav'nly love shall outdoo Hellish hate. John Milton, Paradise Lost [3.298 It is a wonderful seasoning of all enjoyments to think of those we love. --Moliere [Jean Baptiste Poquelin] (1622-1673) _Le Misanthrope_ [1666], Act V, Scene iv ]Believe me if all those endearing young charms, It is not while beauty and youth are thine own, O God, don't allow a sinner to do good to me as my mind may wish to love him. -- Mohammed, Hadith Love talked about can be easily turned aside, but love demonstrated is irresistible. Stan Mooneyham There is nothing half so sweet in life as love's young dreams. Thomas Moore (1779-1852) Against persistent love there is nothing that can be done; it blunts all weapons. --Stuart Morris We take a risk when we open our hearts because, the truth is, if we open our hearts, we will get hurt. You can't open your heart and not have some hurt because you're in a human experience. Even if it's the love of your life and you have many wonderful, deepening, growing, powerful years together, it's a human experience, and that person will pass over. Love takes courage. Be courageous. - Mary Manin Morrissey Love of the world is egocentric, acquisitive, arrogant, ambitious, and absorbing, and leaves no place for any other kind of affection. Those who love the world serve and worship themselves every moment. It is their full-time job. And from this we see that anyone whose hopes are focused on gaining material pleasure, profit, and privilege is booked for a bereavement experience, since as John says, the world will not last. Life's surest certainty is that one day we will leave worldly pleasure,profit, and privilege behind. The only uncertainty is whether these things will leave us before our time comes to leave them. God's true servants, however, do not face such bereavement. Their love and desire centre on the Father and the Son in a fellowship that already exists and that nothing can ever disrupt. Packer, Hot Tub Religion Pg 85-86 If your driving motive in life is to be liked and loved, you will find it almost impossible to be a Christian. Missionaries are people who have decided that being loved by God is enough . We don't need to be loved by others. It feels good. But it is not essential. Loving, not being loved, is essential. J ohn Piper Going out to another in love means risk--the risks of self-disclosure, rejection, misunderstanding. It means grief, too, from the temporary separations, psychological or physical, to the final separation of death. Whoever insists on personal security and safety as the nonnegotiable conditions of life will not be willing to pay love's price or find love's enrichments. Whoever shuts himself or herself up in the cocoon of self-protective defenses, keeping others always at a safe distance and holding on tightly to personal possessions and privacy, will find the price of love far too high and will remain forever a prisoner of fear. --John Powell _Unconditional Love_ [1973] How could that woman love me so much? How could she look at a creature composed of inflammation and charred bone and yet look as though I were the man of her dreams come home? Only God could put it in a woman to love a man the way she did. Through His mercy He placed the knowledge of my true self, the person made in God's image, deep within her heart. --Dave Roever, _Welcome Home, Davey_ [1986] (Written after his wife's visit while hospitalized in an army medical center burn unit recovering from injuries sustained when a phosphorous grenade exploded in his hand while on patrol in Vietnam.) I think it is possible on earth to build a young, new Jerusalem, a little, new heaven of this surpassing love. God, either send me more of this love, or take me quickly over the water, where I may be filled with his love. SAMUEL RUTHERFORD Doubt thou the stars are fire; First, he must choose his love, and then he must love his choice. Love talked about can be easily turned aside, but love demonstrated isirresistible.Henry Smith To love and be loved is the greatest happiness of existence.--- Sydney Smith One word frees us of all the weight and pain in life: that word is love.--- Sophocles Love is indestructible; Go measure the heavens with your span; So long as we love we serve; so long as we are loved by others, I might almost say that we are indispensable; and no man is useless while he has a friend. Robert Louis Stevenson What placed in the Sun: and yet my ware, We can do no great things; only small things with great love. Mother Teresa We are all pencils in the hand of a writing God, who is sending love letters to the world. ... Mother Teresa (Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu) (1910-1997) The first duty of love is to listen. Paul Tillich It is not love we should have painted as blind, but self-love. -- Voltaire The regard I have always had for you is still great, in not greater than ever; and I trust we shall give this and future ages an example of true Christian love abiding, notwithstanding differences in judgment. - George Whitefireld letter to John Wesley, Whitefield, Works, vol 1, p.438 Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead. The consciousness of loving and being love brings a warmth and richness to life that nothing else can bring. --Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) The sense that someone else cares always helps, because it is the sense of love. George E. Woodberry
He has every attribute of a dog except loyalty.--Thomas P. Gore Loyalty to organisations and movements has always tended over time to take the place of loyalty to the person of Christ. FRANCIS SCHAEFFER
"Luck" is a very good word if you put a P before it. I am a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it."- Stephen Butler Leacock (1869-1944) It is bad luck to be superstitious. -- Andrew W. Mathis Luck? I don't know anything about luck. I've never banked on it and I'm afraid of people who do. Luck to me is something else: Hard work -- and realizing what is opportunity and what isn't. Walter Pater (1839-1894) Luck is providence minus God - GJW
Scratching lust's itchy sore. Augustine Do not believe that lust can ever be killed out if
gratified or satiated, for this is an abomination inspired
by illusion. It is by feeding vice that it expands and waxes
strong, like to the worm that fattens on the blossom's
heart. Lust is the ape that gibbers in our loins. Tame him as we will beday, he rages all the wilder in our dreams by night. Just when we think we're safe from him, he raises up his ugly head and smirks, and there's no river in the world flows cold and strong enough to strike him down. Almighty God, why dost thou deck men out with such a loathsome toy? Frederick Buechner Godric Lust is the craving for salt of a man who is dying of thirst. Frederick Buechner There are no longer sinners, only addictive personalities. Take lust. Those who would have previously been called lustful are now described as 'addicted' to sex and in need of therapy. - Frank Furedi, "Making a virtue of vice" The Spectator 12 Jan 2002 He that but looketh on a plate of ham and eggs to lust
after it hath already committed breakfast with it in his
heart. Capricious, wanton, bold, and brutal lust |
466 Quotes
Last Modified: 3/7/05