"Learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves perfectly equipped to live in a world that no longer exists." - Eric Hofer

"Money is only unused power. The real purpose of wealth, after food, clothing, and shelter, is philanthropy." - Leon Levy

"To stand within a tradition does not limit the freedom of knowledge but makes it possible." - Hans Georg Gadamer

"The person who loves their dream of community will destroy community (even if their intentions are ever so earnest), but the person who loves those around them will create community." - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“Life is change. Growth is optional. Choose wisely.” - Karen Kaiser Clark

"I believe that we were each created to live an adventure, to live beyond those things that are merely handed to us on a day-to-day basis…A man much wiser than me once said, "Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point." If my life is to be a work of art, and if yours is too, we can't allow ourselves to remain untested. We can't stay in a place that requires no risk, no danger, no passion, no faith, no vision. To do so would be to live something less than the life that God gave us." - Shun Fong Lee

"An innate gift and a certain amount of intelligence are important, but what really pays is ordinary experience. Bill Gates is successful largely because he had the good fortune to attend a school that gave him the opportunity to spend an enormous amount of time programming computers – more than 10,000 hours, in fact, before he ever started his own company….The Beatles had a musical gift, but what made them the Beatles was a random invitation to play in Hamburg, Germany, where they performed live as much as five hours a night, seven nights a week. That early opportunity for practice made them shine. Talented? Absolutely. But they also simply put in more hours than anyone else." - Author David Hochman

“You cannot learn humility from books. You learn it by accepting humiliations.” - Mother Teresa of Calcutta

“The fat-laden paczki -- pronounced poonch-key -- likely doesn’t fit into your diet or your doctor’s prescribed lifestyle -- unless you’re bench pressing crates of them.”

"If a man says, 'I love God', and hates his brother, he is a liar." - 1 John 4:20

"For every action, there is an equal and opposite government program."

"To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical." - Thomas Jefferson

"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered ." - Thomas Jefferson, in 1802

"Have courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones; and when you have laboriously accomplished your daily task, go to sleep in peace. God is awake." - Victor Hugo

"How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live." - Thoreau

The Love of God

I used to think that faith was a head trip, a kind of intellectual assent to the truths and doctrines of our religion. I know better now. When my faith began to be shattered, I did not hurt in my head. I hurt all over. Months later when all this had passed, I was sitting talking with a Masai elder about the agony of belief and unbelief. He used two languages to respond to me - his own and Kiswahili. He pointed out that the word my Masai catechist, Paul, and I had used to convey faith was not a very satisfactory word in their language. It meant literally "to agree to." I, myself, knew the word had that shortcoming. He said "to believe" like that was similar to a white hunter shooting an animal with his gun from a great distance. Only his eyes and his finger took part in the act. We should find another word. He said for a man really to believe is like a lion going after its prey. His nose and eyes and ears pick up the prey. His legs give him the speed to catch it. All the power of his body is involved in the terrible death leap and single blow to the neck with the front paw, the blow that actually kills. And as the animal goes down the lion envelops it in his arms (Africans refer to the front legs of an animal as its arms) pulls it to himself, and makes it part of himself. This is the way a lion kills, This is the way a man believes. This is what faith is.

I looked at the elder in amazement. Faith understood like that would explain why, when my own was gone, I ached in every fiber of my being. But my wise old teacher was not finished yet.

"We did not search you out Padri," he said to me. "We did not even want you to come to us. You searched us out. You followed us away from your house into the bush, into the plains, into the steppes where our cattle are, into the hills where we take our cattle for water, into our villages, into our homes. You told us of the High God, how we must search for him, even leave out land and our people to find him. Be we have not done this. We have not left our land. We have not searched for him. He has searched for us. He has searched us out and found us. All the time we think we are the lion. In the end, the lion is God.

Vincent Donovan, Christianity Rediscovered, pg 63

There's no such thing as bad weather; just bad clothing. - UP Guide

"It isn't cheap if you don't get what you need."

"Tradition means giving a vote to most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead...Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about. All democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified by the accident of death. Democracy tells us not to neglect a good man's opinion, even if he is our groom; tradition asks us not to neglect a good man's opinion, even if he is our father." - G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

"To be sane in a mad time,
is bad for the brain, worse
for the heart. The world
is a holy vision had we clarity
to see it; a clarity that men
depend on men to make." - Wendell Berry

“I have hope. I've devoted a lot of time in my life to discovering the grounds for having hope. But that doesn't mean that I'm optimistic.” - Wendell Berry

"To pray for forgiveness without repenting from the wrong is mere babble. To repent without righting the wrong is hypocritical." - Michael Crosby

"Christianity plunges us into many different dimensions of life simultaneously. We can make room in our hearts, to some extent at least, for God and the whole world. We weep with those that weep, and rejoice with those that rejoice." - Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison

The Roots of Scientism

"When we run over libraries, persuaded of these principles, what havoc must we make? If we take in our hand any volume of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance, let us ask, does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames, for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion." - from David Hume’s An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding

"Even the common folk and the most untutored, who have been taught only by the aid of the eyes, cannot be unaware of the excellence of divine art, for it reveals itself in this innumerable and yet distinct and well-ordered variety of the heavenly host." - Jean [or John] Calvin

Peer Pressure

"A dead thing goes with the stream; only a living thing can go against it." - G. K. Chesterton

"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power." -Abraham Lincoln

"And some things that should not have been forgotten were lost; history became legend, legend became myth." - JRR Tolkien

"Not by force of arms are civilizations held together, but by subtle threads of moral and intellectual principle." - Russell Kirk

Small Things

"No one could make a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little." - Edmund Burke

There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those to whom God says, in the end, "Thy will be done." - C.S. Lewis

Self is the root, the tree, and the branches of all the evils of our fallen state. - William Law

Perfection does not consist in any singular state or condition of life, or in any particular set of duties, but in holy and religious conduct of ourselves in every state of Life. - William Law

If you have not chosen the Kingdom of God first, it will in the end make no difference what you have chosen instead. - William Law

He who has learned to pray has learned the greatest secret of a holy and happy life. - William Law

Be intent on the perfection of the present day. - William Law

We must alter our lives in order to alter our hearts, for it is impossible to live one way and pray another. - William Law

Nothing hath separated us from God but our own will, or rather our own will is our separation from God. - William Law

"Every one of us is, even from his mother's womb, a master craftsman of idols." - Jean (John) Calvin, b. 1509

A given amount of health-impairing pollution should be done in the country with the lowest cost, which will be the country with the lowest wages. I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest-wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that.” - Lawrence Summers, as Chief Economist of the World Bank (currently the head of President Obama’s National Economic Council), in an internal memo to a colleague arguing that the World Bank should encourage poor countries to sell space for western pollution.

"Although church and state stand separate, the polical order cannot be renewed without theological virtues working upon it. . . It is from the church that we receive our fundamental postulates of order, justice, and freedom, applying them to our civil society." - Russell Kirk

“The Christian must learn to make a synthesis between his duties as a citizen and his religious practices. There must be no divorce between these two dimensions of his life…. We can also in this light see the mistake of politicians who regard the Church as interfering in politics when the Pope or the Bishops speak on contraception, abortion, strange new definitions of family, the rights of workers, the education of children or what moral standards should guide the mass media. While the Church has no mandate from Christ to produce recipes for the solution of political or economic questions, the Church has the duty to invoke the light of the Gospel on various areas of human endeavor, on matters of right and wrong and on the morality of human acts in general." - Francis Cardinal Arinze

In 1991 Rolling Stone interviewed Bob Dylan on the occasion of his 50th birthday, and at one point the interviewer asked Dylan if he was happy. This seemed to puzzle him a bit, and he was silent for a minute. Then he said, “You know,” he said, “these are yuppie words, happiness and unhappiness. It’s not happiness or unhappiness, it’s either blessed or unblessed. As the Bible says, ‘Blessed is the man who walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly.’" - theamericanscene.com

The Preamble to the Michigan Constitution, 1908: "We, the people of the State of Michigan, grateful to Almighty God for the blessings of freedom, establish this Constitution..."

“The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is an attribute of the strong.” - Mahatma Gandhi

"Why is forgiving such a challenge? From whichever perspective we approach it — whether we are trying to forgive someone who has hurt us, or are in dire need of forgiveness ourselves — when we enter into the process, we find ourselves laid bare. The intense searchlight of mercy invades our every hiding place. We cannot go through being stripped of false dignity and self-justifying excuses without being changed. Transformation is unavoidable, for our blind eyes have been opened and now we see." - Paula Huston

"When I think about atheist friends, including my father, they seem to me like people who have no ear for music, or who have never been in love. It is not that (as they believe) they have rumbled the tremendous fraud of religion – prophets do that in every generation. Rather, these unbelievers are simply missing out on something that is not difficult to grasp. Perhaps it is too obvious to understand; obvious, as lovers feel it was obvious that they should have come together, or obvious as the final resolution of a fugue." - A. N. Wilson, Why I believe again

"...Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God;
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes,
The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries,
And daub their natural faces unaware."

From Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Aurora Leigh:

The Mystery of Freedom

“God has fashioned creatures in his image so that they might be joined in a perfect union with him in the rational freedom of love. For that very reason, what God permits, rather than violate the autonomy of the created world, may be in itself contrary to what he wills. But there is no contradiction in saying that, in his omniscience, omnipotence, and transcendence of time, God can both allow created freedom its scope and yet so constitute the world that nothing can prevent him from bringing about the beatitude of his Kingdom...Until that final glory, however, the world remains divided between two kingdoms, where light and darkness, life and death, grow up together and await the harvest. In such a world, our portion is charity, and our sustenance is faith, and so it will be until the end of days. As for comfort, when we seek it, I can imagine none greater than the happy knowledge that when I see the death of a child, I do not see the face of God but the face of his enemy. Such faith might never seem credible to someone like Ivan Karamazov, or still the disquiet of his conscience, or give him peace in place of rebellion, but neither is it a faith that his arguments can defeat: for it is a faith that set us free from optimism long ago and taught us hope instead." - David Bentley Hart, The Doors of the Sea

“Sin is not what is wrong with our minds; it is the catastrophic disorder in which we find ourselves at odds with God. This is the human condition. The facts of this disorder are all around and within us, but we would prefer to forget them. To remember them is also to remember God, and to remember God is to have to live strenuously, vigorously, and in love. We have moments when we desire to do this, but the moments don’t last long. We would rather play golf. We would rather take another battery of tests at the hospital. We would rather take another course at the university. We keep looking for ways to improve our lives without dealing with God. But we can’t do it.” - Eugene Peterson

"You should not look a gift universe in the mouth." - G. K. Chesterton

"It is by no means easy to hold beliefs for which you would be willing to die, and yet to remain open to new insights; but it is precisely such a combination of commitment and inquiry that constitutes religious maturity." - Ian Barbour, Myths, Models and Paradigms: A Comparative Study in Science and Religion

“God’s love for us is unconditional; it is not a love drawn from God by something good in us. It flows out of God because of His nature. God’s love is an action toward us, not a reaction to us….We can refuse the love of God, but we cannot stop Him from loving us. We can reject it and thus stop its inflow into us, but we can do nothing to stop its outflow from Him. Grace is the unconditional love of God in Christ freely given to the sinful, the undeserving, and the imperfect.” - David Seamands, from Healing Grace

"It is no excuse for presumptuous ignorance that it is directed by insolent passion." - Edmund Burke

"Eloquence may exist without a proportionate degree of wisdom."

"But all worthy things that are in peril as the world now stands, those are my care. And for my part, I shall not wholly fail of my task, though Gondor should perish, if anything passes through this night that can still grow fair or bear fruit and flower again in days to come." - Gandalf (J.R.R. Tolkien)

I Would Have Guessed 20

I Didn't Know We Could Choose

“It is better to think of church in the ale-house than to think of the ale-house in church.” - Martin Luther

On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of the conditions. Does any-one have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies' straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake some day and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return." - Annie Dillard, from Teaching a Stone to Talk

Recovering Theological Language

"...as Christians we have increasingly secularized our own language. Outside worship, and sometimes even in worship, we have tended to adopt nontheological language to describe Christian theology and Christian life. For example, instead of baptism, we talk of 'getting the baby done.' Instead of sin and grace, we talk about 'accepting that you are accepted.' And instead of practices of reconciliation, we talk about 'managing conflict' or 'coping with difficult people.' Indeed, it would seem as if Christians - laypeople, clergy, and theologians - have become immunized against the use of theological language for characterizing our lives in general, and forginveness in particular. Unfortunately, we have not been as effectively immunized against 'therapeutic' language. The grammar of Christian forgiveness has been largely co-opted by a therapeutic grammar. Theodore Jennings has characterized our culture as being caught by 'mental health moralism and therapeutic narcissism.' When forgiveness is seen in primiarily individualistic and privatistic terms, we lose sight of its central role in establishing a way of life - not only with our 'inner' selves but also in our relations with others." - L. Gregory Jones, fromEmbodying Forgiveness

“Today, I was at the park. A man walked by on his cell phone. All I heard was, ‘Well, if it's only three elves, then I don't think anyone will get hurt.’ So many questions...” - mylifeisaverage.com

“Today, I read the tag on my scarf. It says 'One size fits most'. I've been wondering who wouldn't fit a scarf.” - mylifeisaverage.com

Writing

"Every book has an intrinsic impossibility, which its writer discovers as soon as his first excitement dwindles." - Annie Dillard

“What point in countless books and libraries whose catalogues their owner cannot scan in a lifetime? The student is loaded down, not instructed, by the bulk; it is much better to give yourself to a few authors than to stray through many.” — Seneca, from On Tranquillity, d. A.D. 65

Let that be deemed a proper Eucharist, which is administered either by the bishop, or by one to whom he has entrusted it. It is not lawful without the bishop either to baptize or to celebrate a love feast. - St. Ignatius of Antioch's Letter to the Smyrnaeans

He suffered truly, not as certain unbelievers maintain that He only seemed to suffer, as they themselves only seem to be Christians. - St. Ignatius of Antioch's Letter to the Smyrnaeans

Let fire and the cross; let the crowds of wild beasts; let tearings, breakings, and dislocations of bones; let cutting off of members; let shatterings of the whole body; and let all the dreadful torments of the devil come upon me; only let me attain to Jesus Christ. - St. Ignatius of Antioch's Letter to the Romans

Only request on my behalf that I may not merely be called a Christians, but really be found to be one. - St. Ignatius of Antioch's Letter to the Romans

Mercy

Let us not therefore be insensible to His kindness. For were He to reward us according to our works, we should cease to be. - St. Ignatius of Antioch's Letter to the Magnesians

Communion

...breaking one and the same bread, which is the medicine of immortality, and the antidote to prevent us from dying. - St. Ignatius of Antioch's Letter to the Ephesians

The tree is made manifest by its fruit; so those that profess themselves to be Christian shall be recognized by their conduct. For there is not now a demand for mere profession, but that a man be found continuing in the power of faith to the end. - St. Ignatius of Antioch's Letter to the Ephesians

For the beginning is faith, and the end is love. - St. Ignatius of Antioch's Letter to the Ephesians

Worship

Take heed then often to come together to give thanks to God, and show forth His praise. For when ye assemble frequently in the same place, the powers of Satan are destroyed, and the destruction at which he aims is prevented by the unity of your faith. - St. Ignatius of Antioch's Letter to the Ephesians

Penitence

For let us stand in awe of the wrath to come, or show regard for the grace which is at present displayed - one of two things. - St. Ignatius of Antioch's Letter to the Ephesians

Prayer

And pray ye without ceasing on behalf of other men. For there is in them hope of repentance that they may attain to God. See, then, that they be instructed by your works, if in no other way. - St. Ignatius of Antioch's Letter to the Ephesians

For some are in the habit of carrying about the name of Jesus Christ in wicked guile...They are men who can scarcely be cured. - St. Ignatius of Antioch's Letter to the Ephesians

Pride

He, therefore, that does not assemble in the Church, has even by this manifested pride, and condemned himself. For it is written, "God resisteth the proud." - St. Ignatius of Antioch's Letter to the Ephesians

Wherefore it is fitting that ye should run together in accordance with the will of you bishop. For your justly renowned presbytery, worthy of God, is fitted as exactly to the bishop as the strings are to the harp. Therefore in concord and harmonious love, Jesus Christ is sung. - St. Ignatius of Antioch's Letter to the Ephesians

I do not issue orders to you, as if I were some great person. For though I am bound for the name of Christ, I am not yet perfect in Jesus Christ. For now I begin to be a disciple, and I speak to you as fellow disciples with me. For it was needful for me to have been stirred up by you in faith, exhortation, patience, and long-suffering. But inasmuch as love suffers me not to be silent in regard to you, I have therefore taken upon me first to exhort you that ye would all run together in accordance with the will of God. - St. Ignatius of Antioch's Letter to the Ephesians

Whoever perverts the oracles of the Lord to his own lusts, and says that there is neither a resurrection nor a judgement, he is the first-born of Satan. Wherefore, forsaking the vanity of many, and their false doctrines, let us return to the word which has been handed down to us from the beginning- Epistle of Polycarp to the Philippians

Purity

Let the young men also be blameless in all things, being especially careful to preserve purity. - Epistle of Polycarp to the Philippians

Heritage

The strong root of your faith, spoken of in days long gone by, endureth even until now, and bringeth forth fruit to our Lord Jesus Christ. - Epistle of Polycarp to the Philippians

...chains, the fitting ornaments of saints, and which are indeed the diadems of the true elect of God - Epistle of Polycarp to the Philippians

This is He who was from the beginning, who appeared as if new, and was found old, and yet who is ever born afresh in the hearts of the saints. - Epistle of Mathetes to Diognetus Chp 11

Finding God

He who takes upon himself the burden of his neighbour; he who, in whatsoever respect he may be superior, is ready to benefit another who is deficient, he is an imitator of God. Then thou shalt see, while still on earth, that God in the heavens rules over the universe; then thou shall begin to speak the mysteries of God; then shalt thou both love and admire those that suffer punishment because they will not deny God; then shall thou condemn the deceit and error of the world when thou shall know what it is to live truly in heaven...- Epistle of Mathetes to Diognetus Chp 10

Atonement

For what other thing was capable of covering our sins than His righteousness? By what other one was it possible that we, the wicked and ungodly, could be justified, than by the only Son of God? O sweet exchange! - Epistle of Mathetes to Diognetus Chp 9

The Power of God

Do you not see them exposed to wild beasts, that they may be persuaded to deny the Lord, and yet not overcome? Do you not see that the more of them are punished, the greater becomes the number of the rest? This does not seem to be the work of man: this is the power of God.- Epistle of Mathetes to Diognetus Chp 7

What the soul is in the body, that are the Christians in the world. The soul is dispersed through all the members of the body, and Christians are scattered through all the cities of the world. The soul dwells in the body, yet is not of the body; and Christians dwell in the world, yet are not of the world. - Epistle of Mathetes to Diognetus Chp 6

Sojourners

For Christians dwell in their own countries, but simply as sojourners. As citizens, they share in all things with others, and yet endure all things as if foreigners. - Epistle of Mathetes to Diognetus Chp 5

Come together often seeking the things which are befitting your souls. - Didache Chp 16

Even as this broken bread was scattered over the hills, and was gathered together and became one, so let Thy Church be gathered together from the ends of the earth into Thy kingdom. - Didache Chp 9

"When faith encounters art, in particular in the liturgy, a profound synthesis is created, making visible the Invisible...beauty is a powerful means to draw us closer to the Mystery of God. May the Lord help us to rediscover that 'way of beauty', surely one of the best ways to know and to love Almighty God." - Pope Benedict 16, Nov. 2009

Christmas Ornaments

“No mom in the history of moms has ever turned down a hand-made ornament.” - per an ad for Bass Pro Shop’s Christmas Wonderland

"He who pardons easily invites offense." - Pierre Corneille

“No scientific theory touches on the mysteries that the religious tradition addresses. A man asking why his days are short and full of suffering is not disposed to turn to algebraic quantum field theory for the answer. The answers that prominent scientific figures have offered are remarkable in their shallowness. The hypothesis that we are nothing more than cosmic accidents has been widely accepted by the scientific community. Figures as diverse as Bertrand Russell, Jacques Monod, Steven Weinberg, and Richard Dawkins have said it is so. It is an article of their faith, one advanced with the confidence of men convinced that nature has equipped them to face realities the rest of us cannot bear to contemplate. There is not the slightest reason to think this so.” – David Berlinski, The Devil’s Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions

"The past shows unvaryingly that when a people's freedom disappears, it goes not with a bang, but in silence amid the comfort of being cared for. That is the dire peril in the present trend toward statism. If freedom is not found accompanied by a willingness to resist, and to reject favors, rather than to give up what is intangible but precarious, it will not long be found at all." — Richard Weaver

Patriotism

"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animated contest of freedom, go from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen!” - Samuel Adams

Change

“There is a certain relief in change, even though it is from bad to worse; as I have found in traveling in a stage-coach, that it is often a comfort to shift one’s position and be bruised in a new place." - Washington Irving

Education

The object of education is to teach us to love what is beautiful. - Socrates

You might say that some of his forays into philosophy are at best sophomoric, but that would be unfair to sophomores; the fact is (grade inflation aside), many of his arguments would receive a failing grade in a sophomore philosophy class.” - Alvin Plantinga, from his review of Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion

"If not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled." - P. G. Wodehouse

"I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel." - Maya Angelou

Anger

"There are very few things in the world which it is worthwhile to get angry about, and they are just the things that anger will not improve." - Henry Jarvis Raymond

O world of spring and autumn, birth and dying!
The endless cycle of idea and action,
Endless invention, endless experiment,
Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;
Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;
Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word.
All our knowledge brings us nearer to death,
But nearness to death no nearer to God.
Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries
Brings us farther from God and nearer to the Dust.

T. S. Eliot's Choruses from The Rock, 1934

How to Successfully Avoid God

Avoid silence, avoid solitude, avoid any train of thought that leads off the beaten track. Concentrate on money, sex, status, health and (above all) on your own grievances. Keep the radio on. Live in a crowd. Use plenty of sedation. If you must read books, select them very carefully. But you’d be safer to stick to the papers. You’ll find the advertisements helpful; especially those with a sexy or a snobbish appeal. - C. S. Lewis, from "The Seeing Eye" in Christian Reflections

"Everyone is entitled to be stupid, but some abuse the privilege." - Unknown

"I get up every morning determined both to change the world and to have one hell of a good time. This makes planning the day difficult." - E.B. White

Hell

The one principle of hell is--"I am my own!" - George MacDonald

Church Politics

As for any influence from the public officers of religion, a contented soul may glide through them all for a long life, unstruck to the last, buoyant and evasive as a bee among hailstones.- George MacDonald

The Pursuit of Mediocrity

“I KNOW they want perfect quality, but they aren’t paying for perfect quality. They’re paying for the crap we’re sending them.” – a manufacturing supervisor near you

Prudence

"If your attack is going too well, you're walking into an ambush." - Infantry Journal

Bravery

"Bravery is being the only one who knows you're afraid." - David Hackworth

Liberal "Christianity"

I would say that if you don’t believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ and Messiah, and that he rose again from the dead and by his sacrifice our sins are forgiven, you’re really not in any meaningful sense a Christian. - Atheist Christopher Hitchens on liberal Christians

Culture

"A culture is perennially in need of renewal. A culture does not survive and prosper merely by being taken for granted; active defense is always required, and imaginative growth, too." - Russell Kirk

Perseverance

"To desire the end is to desire the means to that end. If you are unwilling to embrace all actions required to achieve it, you never really wanted it at all." - SM Stirling

Class

“Yeah, black velvet is classy – until somebody paints Elvis on it.”

New Year's Resolution

“My New Year’s Resolution is gonna be to stop dusting and use the coffee table as a message board.”

Long Day?

Son: "Mom, are there more than 44 hours in a day?"

Mom, taking full(?) advantage of a teachable moment: "Is 44 more than 27?"

Patience

"Let us be very sincere in our dealings with each other, and have the courage to accept each other as we are. Do not be surprised or become preoccupied at each other's failures—rather, see and find in each other the good, for each of us is created in the image of God." - Mother Teresa of Calcutta

Democracy

"The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money." - Alexis de Tocqueville

Dorm Life

“In the bathroom of a girls’ dorm at Olivet Nazarine University, a church-sponsored college in Illinois, there were three totally enclosed toilets, plus one with no privacy door. The residents awoke one morning to find them labeled I John, II John, III John and Revelation.” - Ruth Rupnow

Valentine's Day

“I don’t know why Cupid was chosen to represent Valentine’s Day. When I think about romance, the last thing on my mind is a short, chubby toddler coming at me with a weapon.” - Paul McGinty

Imperfection

“Your ‘future dream wedding day’ will be less than perfect because you, your groom and life are less than perfect. The more you ask life to grace you with improbable things (such as, perfection in a catered event involving alcohol and family members), the more gleefully life giggles when it barfs on your dress.” - Advice columnist Carolyn Hax

Hell

“I live for myself and I answer to nobody.” – Steve McQueen

Idolatry

"You can't understand the human race without understanding its passion to have gods." David Marr

Stupidity

"Life is hard, It's even harder if you are stupid." - John Wayne

Love

God loves each of us as if there were only one of us. - St. Augustine

Melancholy

Coyote song at midnight says something for the world the world wants said. - Wendell Berry, A Timbered Choir