Outlaw, Kreisler, Johnson, Heschel, Elliot, Lewis, Wilberforce, et al – Be blessed by them

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"CS Lewis", Abraham Heschel, Aristotle, Barbara Brown Taylor, Charles Colson, Dag Hammerskjold, David Lyle Jeffrey, Elizabeth Elliot, Frank Outlaw, Henry van Dyke, Ronald Knox, Tom Johnson, Vaclev Havel, William Jennings Brian, William Wilberforce

 

They come from many places and walks of life.  They span the ages.  They are united by their acute observations.  They teach us, and we are blessed by them. 

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• Anyone can become angry – that is easy.  But, to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way – that is not easy.  (Aristotle)
• Watch your thoughts, they become words.  Watch your words, they become actions.  Watch your actions, they become habits.  Watch your habits, they become character. Watch your character, it becomes your destiny.  (Frank Outlaw)
• After a concert, a fan rushed up to famed violinist Fritz Kreisler and gushed, “I ‘d give my whole life to play as beautifully as you do.”  Kreisler replied. “I did.”
• Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly.

• “What are we going to do?” said Baby Tiger to Mama Tiger.  “That hunter has five rifles with night vision scopes.”  “Hush,” said Mama, and showed her cub how to sneak up from behind and pounce. The hunter was never seen again.  Technology can’t replace a good basic education.
• When you see a legislative situation you cannot understand, look for financial interests.  (Tom Johnson, 1984)
• In the view of medieval rabbis, the Bible is a book by God about man.  What it offers its readers is the divine perspective on human affairs.  (David Lyle Jeffrey in “Genesis: Warts and All”  Christianity Today, April 26, 1999)

• No one in the world today has such power as they who can make their fellow human beings feel that Christ is a reality. (Henry van Dyke in The Upward Path)
• Is it possible that my concept of God is a stumbling block to knowing God?
• When I was young, I used to admire intelligent people.  Now, I admire kind people.  (Abraham Heschel)
• A Biblical understanding treats the individual as a moral agent, whose actions deserve either praise or blame.  Punishment is not about pragmatic goals, but about justice. (Charles Colson, “The Oxford Prophet” in Christianity Today, 6/15/98)
• It is easier to repay evil for evil, but then all you you’ve got is evil. (Barbara Brown Taylor, “It’s Hard to Hug a Bully,” in Christianity Today, 1/11/99)

• If I peer anxiously into the fog of the future, I will strain my spiritual eyes so that I will not see clearly what is required of me now.  (Elizabeth Elliot in Keep a Quiet Heart)
• God designed the human machine to run on Himself.  He Himself is our spirit’s fuel and food.  That is why it is just no good asking God to give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there.  There is no such thing.  (C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity)
• The only backbone to our actions, if they are to be moral, is responsibility to something higher than my friends, my country, my success.  Responsibility to where all actions are indelibly recorded and where they will be properly judged.  (Vaclav Havel)
• If the Father deigns to touch with divine power the cold and pulseless heart of the buried acorn and make it burst forth from its prison walls, will He leave neglected in the earth the soul of man, made in the image of his Creator?  (William Jennings Bryan)

• It is so stupid of modern civilization to have given up believing in the devil when he is the only explanation of it. (Ronald Knox in Let Dons Delight)
• Remember, Christianity proposes not to extinguish our natural desires.  It promises to bring the desires under just control and direct them to their true object. (William Wilberforce in Real Christianity)
• You are not the oil, you are not the air – merely the point of combustion, the flash-point where the light is born.  You are merely the lens in the beam.  You can only receive, give, and possess the light as a lens does. (Dag Hammerskjold in Markings)

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From Hesburgh, Stevenson, Aristotle, Churchill, Le Guin, Gregory the Great, and others!!

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Adlai Stevenson, Albert Einstein, Alexis de Tocqueville, Andre Gide, Aristotle, Charles Dickens, David Cooper, Gregory the Great, James Byrnes, Reinhold Niebuhr, Theodore Hesburgh, Theodore Roosevelt), Ursula Le Guin, Will Durant, Winston Churchill

Learning from the astute observers of human behavior is too valuable to ignore.  Here are some of their contributions. 

• Politeness is to human nature what warmth is to wax.
• My basic principle is that you don’t make decisions because they are easy, because they are cheap, or because they are popular. You make them because they are right.  (Theodore Hesburgh, former president of Notre Dame)
• Nature is neutral.  There is no evil in the atom; only in men’s souls. (Adlai Stevenson)
• Our Physician brought from heaven remedies for every single moral fault.  The medical art cures fevers with cold compresses, and chills with heat.  Similarly Jesus prescribed qualities contrary to our sins:  self-restraint to the undisciplined, generosity to the stingy, gentleness to the irritable, and humility to the proud.  (Gregory the Great)

• Never complain about what you permit. (Mike Murdock)
• If you give the devil a ride, he will always want to drive
• Pay attention.  You never know what disguise your next teacher will be wearing.
• Silence – the only sure way of not being misquoted.
• Perfection of means and confusion of ends seems to characterize our age.  (Albert Einstein)

• Order without liberty and liberty without order are equally destructive. (Theodore Roosevelt)
• Perhaps the most central characteristic of authentic leadership is the relinquishing of the impulse to dominate others. (David Cooper in Psychiatry and Anti-Psychiatry)
• Sarcasm is costly humor.  It may cause you to lose your best friend.
• No folly is more costly than intolerant idealism. (Winston Churchill)
• No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another. (Charles Dickens)

• Rearranging bad eggs will never make a good omelet.
• No temporary gain by disloyalty to Christ is ever worth what we lose in this world or the next.
• Of evils, we must choose the least.  (Aristotle)
• If we set our foot upon the spiritual path, the way grows ever more narrow, until at last we can only do what we must. (Ursula Le Guin)
• One doesn’t discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time. (Andre Gide)
• Our capacity for good makes democracy possible, but our inclination to evil makes justice necessary. (Reinhold Niebuhr)

• Pain — nature letting you know you’re still alive and need to do something.
• Perseverance is not a long race; it is a short races one after another.
• Politics is the rivalry of organized minorities; the voters are the bleachers who cheer and jeer, but do not otherwise contribute to the result. (Will Durant)
• Power intoxicates.  When intoxicated by alcohol, one can recover; when intoxicated by power, one seldom recovers. (James Byrnes)
• Referring to his French compatriots in revolutionary times, Alexis de Tocqueville observed, “Halfway down the stairs, they threw themselves out of the window to reach the ground more quickly.”

Of course, you are invited to share your comments

 

 

Ready for some more ? ? ?

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"G K Chesterton", Adlai Stevenson, Ammon S Kauffman, Andrew Gide, aphorisms, Archbishop William Temple, Aristotle, Booth Tarkington, C S Lewis, David Goetz, Don Eberly, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Henry Ford, J Wilbur Chapman, Jack Wyman, Jonathan Edwards, Jose Ortega y Gasset, Landon Jones, Nancy Pearcy, Seneca, Spinoza, Walter Lippman

When needing some provocative thoughts that can take you beyond the “now” and “here”, be invigorated by the following aphoristic observations.  They come from some astute people.  Also, they are complimentary, on the house, and beside that, they are free!!!  Enjoy, be blessed, and reflect.

• A rational man acting in the real world may be defined as one who decides where he will strike a balance between what he desires and what can be done. (Walter Lippman)
• Christ brought to the world a new conception of royalty.  He rules by love and not by force.  That, as He expressly said, is the difference between His kingdom and the kingdoms of this world. (Archbishop William Temple)
• A reform is a correction of abuses; a revolution is a transfer of power. (Edward Bulwer-Lytton)
• A spirit of ingratitude is the first step toward apostasy.  (Ammon S. Kauffman)
• Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle. (Philo of Alexandria)A wise man does not try to hurry history.  (Adlai Stevenson)
• A young person who wishes to remain a strong atheist cannot be too careful of his reading. (C.S. Lewis, referring to the impact of GK Chesterton)
• Christianity has not been tried and found wanting;   it has been found difficult and not tried. (G.K. Chesterton)
• All excellent things are as difficult as they are rare. (Spinoza)
• All the water in the world, however hard it tried, could never sink a ship unless it got inside.
• Behavior unchallenged is encouraged.
• Any group with authority to tell a culture’s creation story, functions as a kind of priesthood.  (Nancy Pearcy.  (Christianity Today, May 22, 2000)
• A generation is the primary agent of social change . . . Reform is thus brought organically into a society.  People don’t change, generations do. (Landon Jones in Great Expectations)
• Cherish your happy moments.  They are a fine cushion for old age. (Booth Tarkington)
• Anything that dims my vision of Christ or takes away my taste for Bible study, or cramps my prayer life, or makes Christian work difficult is wrong for me, and I must, as a Christian, turn away from it.(J. Wilbur Chapman)
• Are you more concerned with the quality of your goals or the quantity of your goods?
• Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist the better. (Andre Gide)
• Be it resolved:  First, that every man should live to the glory of God.  Second, that whether others do this or not, I will. (Jonathan Edwards)
• Concentrating on the politicians while ignoring the culture and the public sentiment it shapes, is myopic and futile.  (attributed to Don Eberly in Christianity Today, October 25, 1999)
• Be the change you wish to see in the world (Gandhi)
• Biblical spirituality is earthy, face-to-face, and often messy. (David Goetz in “Suburban Spirituality,” Christianity Today,  July 2003)
• A hungry man listens not to reason nor cares for justice, nor is bent by any prayer. (Seneca)
• By failing to grasp both the nature and the limits of politics, we can more easily be beguiled by its promises.  (Jack Wyman, in Christianity Today, October 25, 1999)
• By words, the mind is winged. (Aristophanes)
• Civilization is nothing else but the attempt to reduce force to being the last resort. (Jose Ortega y Gasset)
• Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success.  (Henry Ford)