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Musings and Observations by Vernon Caston

Musings and Observations                 by Vernon Caston

Tag Archives: James Baldwin

Their cuts are sharp, but clean . . .

06 Saturday Apr 2013

Posted by stertin in Advice along the way, Change, Clear and logical thinking, Other authors, Pointing beyond the common and natural, Proverbs, Sayings, Quotes, Refrains

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C S Lewis, Charles Colson, Fedor Dostoevsky, Friedrich Nietzsche, Helen Keller, Henry Adams, Isaiah Berlin, James Baldwin, Joseph Addison, Miroslav Volf, Rowan Williams, Tom Landry, Walter Lippman, William Penn

Their cuts are sharp, but clean.  The almost invisible scars point to our dealing severely with life and death issues; they are the authentic beauty marks of the redeemed and renovated.

  • They asked, “Why do you hate Jim so much?”  “Not because he has harmed me,” he said.  “But, I played a dirty trick on him once, and ever since then I have hated him.”  (Fedor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamozov)
  • If we really want to learn how to forgive, perhaps we had better start with something easier than the Gestapo (C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity)
  • Why was C.S. Lewis so uncannily prophetic?  Because he was liberated from the narrow confines of the world-view of his own age — which meant he was able to analyze and critique it.  (Charles Colson, “The Oxford Prophet” in Christianity Today)
  • Marry your culture today, and be a widow tomorrow.
  • Injustice, poverty, slavery, ignorance – these may be cured by reform or revolution.  But, men do not live only by fighting evils, they live by positive goals, individual and collective. (Isaiah Berlin)
  • He became what we are that He might make us what He is.  (Saint Athanasius)
  • The job of a coach is to make players do what they don’t want to do, in order to achieve what they really want.  (Tom Landry)
  • A friend in power is a friend lost. (Henry Adams in The Education of Henry Adams)
  • Those that paint them the truest, praise them the most. (Joseph Addison in The Campaign)
  • Always remember you’re unique — just like everyone else!!!
  • Diplomacy is the art of saying “good doggie” while looking for a bigger stick.
  • When we all think alike, no one thinks very much. (Walter Lippman)
  • A mother told her children to divide all people into two classes: friends and strangers, saying, “Friends we love too well to gossip about, strangers we know too little.”
  • Believe nothing against another but upon good authority; nor report what may hurt another, unless it be a greater hurt to the others to conceal it.  (William Penn in Fruits of Solitude)
  • Humility is not another word for hypocrisy; it is another word for honesty.  It is not pretending to be other than we are, but acknowledging the truth about what we are (John Stott)
  • Hatred, which can destroy so much, never fails to destroy the one who hates, and this in an immutable law. . . One of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense that once hate is gone they will be forced to deal with their pain. (James Baldwin)
  • The marvelous richness of human experience would lose something of rewarding joy if there were no limitations to overcome. (Helen Keller)
  • Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster (Friedrich Nietzsche, in Beyond Good and Evil)
  • Unity will always be something imposed from outside rather than growing from within:  and so it comes about that states need enemies. (Rowan Williams in Politics and the Soul)
  • There is no imaginable deed that can take a person out of God’s will to embrace humanity – which is inscribed in big letters in the narrative of the cross of Christ. (Miroslav Volf)

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