Verily, youth is good, but old age is better— to the man who forsakes not his youth when his youth forsakes him.
George MacDonald, The Seaboard Parish, page 79
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“No words can express how much the world owes to sorrow. Most of the Psalms were born in the wilderness. Most of the Epistles were written in a prison. The greatest thoughts of the greatest thinkers have all passed through fire. The greatest poets have “learned in suffering what they taught in song.” In bonds Bunyan lived the allegory that he afterwards wrote, and we may thank Bedford Jail for the Pilgrim’s Progress. Take comfort, afflicted Christian! When God is about to make pre-eminent use of a person, He put them in the fire.” George MacDonald-
“The more generous we are, the more joyous we become. The more cooperative we are, the more valuable we become. The more enthusiastic we are, the more productive we become. The more serving we are, the more prosperous we become.”-- William Arthur Ward
“It is very important to generate a good attitude, a good heart, as much as possible. From this, happiness in both the short term and the long term for both yourself and others will come.”-- Dalai Lama
“Instead of buying your children all the things you never had, you should teach them all the things you were never taught. Material wears out but Knowledge stays.”-- Bruce Lee
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"This was the age of dogmatic theology framed in terms of a conceptualist metaphysics. These manuals were offered to the young Lonergan, training him in Aristotelian logic and in skills of apologetics to defend Catholic truth. Little encouragement was given to speaking of personal experience, to cultivating one’s own powers of inquiry, or to investigating questions that had not already been answered by authorities from the past. On this matter Lonergan was wont to exercise a sardonic wit that would get him into trouble at various times in his life. During his time in England he had a visit from his Provincial superior who asked him: “Are you orthodox?” In response he confessed: “Yes I am orthodox, but I think a lot!” Speaking the philosophy and theology of the time he would later assert: “One entered the rationalist door of abstract right reason, and came out in the all but palpable embrace of authoritarian religion”. - Gerard Whelan, S.J.
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“Keep close to Nature’s heart… and break clear away, once in a while, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean.”-- John Muir
“Three things in human life are important: the first is to be kind; the second is to be kind; and the third is to be kind.”-- Henry James
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The weird thing about self-esteem is how little connection it bears to reality. Many burglars and murderers feel great about themselves. Yet many upstanding citizens whom a jury of sages would declare kind, wonderful, and worthy hate themselves. ~~ Anneli Rufus
“We are products of our past, but we don’t have to be prisoners of it.”-- Rick Warren
…advice given on request is generally disregarded; to offer advice unasked is worthy only of a fool. George MacDonald, The Seaboard Parish, p. 215
“The best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time.”-- Abraham Lincoln
“Experience is stronger than belief. Once we have experiences, our mind begins to open. This works better than me forcing my own experience or knowledge onto anyone. Show them how to have their own experiences.”-- Brian Weiss
“A simple life is not seeing how little we can get by with - that’s poverty - but how efficiently we can put first things first. When you’re clear about your purpose and your priorities, you can painlessly discard whatever does not support these, whether it’s clutter in your cabinets or commitments on your calendar.”-- Victoria Moran
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“It is not the cares of today, but the cares of tomorrow, that weigh a man down. For the needs of today we have corresponding strength given. For the morrow we are told to trust. It is not ours yet. It is when tomorrow’s burden is added to the burden of today that the weight is more than a man can bear.” -George MacDonald
“The best moments in reading are when you come across something - a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things - which you had thought special and particular to you. Now here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out and taken yours.”-- Alan Bennett
“It is never too late to be what you might have been.”-George Elliot-
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“God never hurries. There are no deadlines against which he must work. Only to know this is to quiet our spirits and relax our nerves.”
A.W. Tozer
“I want the presence of God Himself, or I don’t want anything at all to do with religion… I want all that God has or I don’t want any.”
“When you let go of control and commit yourself to happiness, it is so easy to offer compassion and forgiveness. This propels you from the past, into the present. People that are negative spend so much time trying to control situations and blame others for their problems. Committing yourself to staying positive is a daily mantra that states, I have control over how I plan to react, feel, think and believe in the present. No one guides the tone of my life, except me!”-- Shannon L. Alder
“Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers.”-- Charles W. Eliot
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St. Gregory of Nyssa describes the passions as qualities we inherit from our animal nature:
“The animals came into this world before we did and we have inherited some of their qualities. This is the spring from which our emotions are derived. Those qualities which secure self-preservation in animals have been transferred into human life and become passions… Human nature…has a double likeness. In the drive of the passions it reproduces the signs of the animal creation, but in the soul it has the features of the divine beauty.”
Coniaris, Anthony M… Philokalia: The Bible of Orthodox Spirituality .
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St. Greg was, sadly, nuts.
Haha, I’m sure that in your mind that is true.
“Christianity is not a religion. Christianity is the proclamation of the end of religion, not of a new religion, or even of the best of all religions. If the cross is the sign of anything, it’s the sign that God has gone out of the religion business and solved all of the world’s problems without requiring a single human being to do a single religious thing. What the cross is actually a sign of is the fact that religion can’t do a thing about the world’s problems - that it never did work and it never will.”
Robert Farrar Capon
“Grace cannot prevail…until our lifelong certainty that someone is keeping score has run out of steam and collapsed.”
“Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.”-- Jenna Evans Welch
“Acknowledge, accept, and honor that you deserve your own deepest compassion and love.”-- Nanette Mathews
“If you want to touch the past, touch a rock. If you want to touch the present, touch a flower. If you want to touch the future, touch a life.”-- Author unknown
“Being organized isn’t about getting rid of everything you own or trying to become a different person: it’s about living the way you want to live, but better.”-- Andrew Mellen
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“For the Church is a hospital for sinners, not a court of law” - Kallistos Ware
“A bird sitting on a tree is never afraid of the branch breaking, because her trust is not on the branch but on its own wings. Always believe in yourself.”-- Author Unknown
“Assume the feeling of your wish fulfilled.”-- Neville Goddard