“A true opium of the people is a belief in nothingness after death – the huge solace of thinking that for our betrayals, greed, cowardice, murders we are not going to be judged.”
– Czeslaw Milosz, Polish writer and Nobel Prize winner. 1911 – 2004
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“There is an eagle in me that wants to soar, and there is a hippopotamus in me that wants to wallow in the mud.”
– Author, poet Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)
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“In ordinary life we hardly realize that we receive a great deal more than we give, and that it is only with gratitude that life becomes rich.”
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and then bid the geldings to be fruitful. -C. S. Lewis in The Abolition of Man
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“The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.”
— G.K. Chesterton
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When Christians meet…their purpose is not—or should not be—to ascertain what is the mind of the majority, but what is the mind of the Holy Spirit—something which may be quite different.
— Margaret Thatcher, former British Prime Minister (1925—)
— George MacDonald
— Marilyn Monroe
“Prayer is not overcoming God’s reluctance, but laying hold of His willingness.” – Martin Luther
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“The object of a new year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul.” – G. K. Chesterton
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“The person with the discontented heart has the attitude that everything he does for God is too much, and everything God does for him is too little.”
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When St. Augustine was asked for the 3 great principles of Christianity, he replied: “First, humility. Second, humility. Third, humility”
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The gospel message says: “You don’t live in a mechanistic world ruled by necessity; you don’t live in a random world ruled by chance; you live in a world ruled by the God of Exodus and Easter. He will do things in you that neither you nor your friends would have supposed possible.”
Eugene H. Peterson, Five Smooth Stones for Pastoral Work (William B. Eerdmans, 1992), p. 175
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Here’s the gospel: you’re more sinful than you ever dared believe; you’re more loved than you ever dared hope. —Tim Keller, Redeemer Presbyterian Church, NYC
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One chief cause of the amount of unbelief in the world is that those who have seen something of the glory of Christ set themselves to theorize concerning him rather than to obey him. –George MacDonald
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The nature of Christ’s salvation is woefully misrepresented by the present-day “evangelist.” He announces a Saviour from hell rather than a Saviour from sin. And that is why so many are fatally deceived, for there are multitudes who wish to escape the Lake of fire who have no desire to be delivered from their carnality and worldliness.
… A. W. Pink (1886-1952), Studies on Saving Faith,
Swengel, Pa.: Reiner Publications, 1932, p. 9-10
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Too many of us have a Christian vocabulary rather than a Christian experience. We think we are doing our duty when we’re only talking about it. … Charles F. Banning
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“We want a whole race perpetually in pursuit of the rainbow’s end, never honest, nor kind, nor happy now, but always using as mere fuel wherewith to heap the altar of the Future every real gift which is offered them in the Present.”
Wormwood to his apprentice
C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
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Men do not differ much about what things they will call evils; they differ enormously about what evils they will call excusable. —G. K. Chesterton.
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There is endless room for rebellion against ourselves — George MacDonald, Unspoken Sermons, Second Series, Man’s Difficulty Concerning Prayer
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Man finds it hard to get what he wants, because he does not want the best; God finds it hard to give, because He would give the best, and man will not take it. — George MacDonald, Unspoken Sermons, Second Series, Life
