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Quotes to Ponder

"Power without love is reckless and abusive,
  and love without power is sentimental and anemic.
   Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice,
    and justice at its best is power correcting 
      everything that stands against love."
        Martin Luther King Jr.

"It seems so much easier in these days to live morally than to live beautifully. 
  Lots of us manage to exist for years without ever sinning against society, 
   but we sin against loveliness every hour of the day." 
     Evelyn Underhill

“Every happening, great and small, 
   is a parable whereby God speaks to us,  
    and the art of life is to get the message.” 
     Malcolm Muggeridge

"But this is what the past is for! 
  Every experience God gives us, 
   every person He puts in our lives 
    is the perfect perparation for the future only He can see." 
     Corrie ten Boom: Preface of The Hiding Place

"He is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose."
 Jim Elliot, martyred missionary


"But we'll be careful to be peacemakers and not peacekeepers. 
  Peacekeepers are likely to overlook the causes of pain and suffering, 
    to avoid dealing with it in order to maintain some kind of equilibrium 
     regardless of what it may be based on. 
      Peacekeepers prefer the status quo 
       and are apt to tell the hungry to quiet down 
         lest they disturb the sleep of the overfed."  
           Bishop William Frey in The Dance of Hope

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. 
   Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. 
    If you want to make sure of keeping it intact,
     you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. 
      Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries;
       avoid all entanglements; 
        lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. 
         But in that casket- safe, dark, motionless, airless--it will change. 
          It will not be broken;
           it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.” 
            C. S. Lewis 

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised
 for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.
  It would be better to live under robber barons
   than under omnipotent moral busybodies.
    The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep,
      his cupidity may at some point be satiated;
        but those who torment us for our own good
          will torment us without end for they do so
            with the approval of their own conscience.
              They may be more likely to go to Heaven
                yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth.
                 This very kindness stings with intolerable insult.
                   To be “cured” against one’s will and cured of states
                     which we may not regard as disease 
                       is to be put on a level of those 
                        who have not yet reached the age of reason
                          or those who never will; to be classed with infants, 
                            imbeciles, and domestic animals."
                              ~ C. S. Lewis

"It is not the bee's touching on the flowers that gathers the honey, 
  but her abiding for a time upon them, and drawing out the sweet. 
   It is not he that reads most, but he that meditates most on divine truth, 
     that will prove the choicest, strongest Christian.
      Joseph Hall 


"The grace of God does not rewrite history -- what's done is done.
  But that grace is able to begin to heal the wounds of our history 
   and to offer us a foretaste of the promised future shalom, 
    where all will be reconciled." 
     Bishop William Frey in The Dance of Hope


"I do the wrong, and first begin to brawl.
  But then I sigh; and, with a piece of scripture,
    Tell them that God bids us do good for evil:
      And thus I clothe my naked villany
        With old odd ends stolen out of holy writ;
          And seem a saint, when most I play the devil."
            William Shakespeare, Richard III
 

Three by G.K. Chesterton...
"There is a proverb, 'As you have made your bed, so you must lie on it,' which is a lie. If I have made my bed uncomfortable, please God I will make it again." 
"You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink.” 
“To be Queen Elizabeth within a definite area, deciding sales, banquets, labours and holidays; to be Whiteley within a certain area, providing toys, boots, sheets, cakes and books; to be Aristotle within a certain area, teaching morals, manners, theology, and hygiene; I can understand how this might exhaust the mind, but I cannot imagine how it could narrow it. How can it be a large career to tell other people’s children about the Rule of Three, and a small career to tell one’s own children about the universe? How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone, and narrow to be everything to someone? No; a woman’s function is laborious, but because it is gigantic, not because it is minute. I will pity Mrs. Jones for the hugeness of her task; I will never pity her for its smallness.” 

And finally, I couldn't resist this sage advice from a bumper sticker...


"Wag more. Bark less."

Do you have a favorite quote that goes well with the theme of this web site?  
Send it along so I can include it here!

Virginia Knowles