Quotes
by Neremite@ · 43 things on NewTwos
- Joseph Campbell, "People say that what we're all seeking is a meaning for life. I don't think that's what we're really seeking. I think that what we're seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances within our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive."
- Bill Moyers: Do you ever have the sense of being helped by hidden hands?
- Joseph Campbell's reply: All the time. It is miraculous. I even have a superstition that has grown on me as a result of invisible hands coming all the time - namely, that if you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. When you can see that, you begin to keep people who are in your field of bliss, and they open doors to you. I say, follow your bliss and don't be afraid, and doors will open where you didn't know they were going to be.
- Mother Teresa, "Though you hide yourself behind the distressing disguise of the irritable - the exacting - the unreasonable - may I still recognize you and say “Jesus, my patient, how sweet it is to serve you.”
- Wendell Berry, "It may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work, and that when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings."
- Nadia Bolz Weber, "So perhaps Jesus’ question to Peter, “Why did you doubt?”, pertained less to Peter's doubting he could pull off some mad skills [by walking on the water] and more to Peter's doubting that God could be present as he struggled with the darkness and chaos of the human experience." from What Did Jesus Ask, Matthew 14:31
- Howard Thurman, "Don't ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive."
- Frederick Buechner, "The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet."
- Eugene Peterson, "Jesus’ favorite speech form, the parable, was subversive. Parables sound absolutely ordinary: casual stories about soil and seeds, meals and coins and sheep, bandits and victims, farmers and merchants. And they are wholly secular: of his forty or so parables recorded in the Gospels, only one has its setting in church, and only a couple mention the name of God. As people heard Jesus tell these stories, they saw at once that they weren’t about God, so there was nothing in them threatening their own sovereignty. They relaxed their defenses. They walked away perplexed, wondering what they meant, the stories lodged in their imagination. And then, like a time bomb, they would explode in their unprotected hearts. An abyss opened up at their very feet. He was talking about God: they had been invaded!"
- Eugene Peterson, "Prayer is subversive activity. It involves a more or less open act of defiance against any claim by the current regime…. [As we pray,] slowly but surely, not culture, not family, not government, not job, not even the tyrannous self can stand against the quiet power and creative influence of God’s sovereignty."
- Marley's Ghost from Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol", No space of regret can make amends for one life’s opportunity missed!
- Ryder Carroll, "Nowadays [pleasure] is a commodity marketed as a substitute for happiness…", Bullet Journal Method p. 143
- Julia Cameron, "All too often, we become blocked and blame it on our lack of money. This is never an authentic block. The actual block is our feeling of constriction, our sense of powerlessness. Art requires us to empower ourselves with choice. At the most basic level, this means choosing to do self-care." The Artist's Way p. 109
- Ryder Carroll, "Not all things we're into are meant to be our occupation… It's important to figure out what role the things that interest you play in your life. Not every hobby or curiosity is a calling, but some are. We figure that out by safely trying them on for size for a short period of time before making a major commitment." p. 157
- Ryder Carroll, "In an 'all-or-nothing' world, we tend to forget the power of something. The mightiest tree sprouts from a vulnerable seed. The seed of passion is curiosity. The seed of perseverance is patience. By designing your goals strategically, you can begin to cultivate your opportunities by seeding both your patience and curiosity." p. 152
- Ryder Carroll, "Maybe we have it all backward. It seems that in our pursuit of happiness, we're taking our focus off of what could be meaningful. But it's in the pursuit of what is meaningful that happiness seems most likely to appear. " p. 146
- Ryder Carroll, "If happiness is the result of our actions, then we need to stop asking ourselves how to be happy. Rather, we should be asking ourselves how to be." p. 145
- Sir William Osler as quoted in "The Red Sea Rules" p. 63, "Our main business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand."
- Mizuta Masahide, "Since my house burned down, I now own a better view of the rising moon."
- Miller Williams as quoted by Lucinda Williams, "Compassion"
- "Have compassion for everyone you meet
even if they don't want it. What seems conceit,
bad manners, or cynicism is always a sign
of things no ears have heard, no eyes have seen.
You do not know what wars are going on
down there where the spirit meets the bone.
- Robert J. Morgan, "We always make a mistake when we acknowledge the Lord and keep our eyes on Satan. Far better to acknowledge the devil while keeping our eyes on Christ." "Red Sea Rules" p. 38
- Robert J. Morgan, "There is a better approach, one that results in an entirely new way of looking at difficulties, that puts our problems into a different context and creates a new paradigm for dealing with tough situations. The next time you're overwhelmed, instead of asking, “How can I get out of this mess?” Try asking, “How can God be glorified in this situation?” One's perspective is entirely changed by the spiritual realities behind that approach. It's like switching on floodlights in a dark stadium." "Red Sea Rules" p. 19
- Rainer Maria Rilke, "So you must not be frightened...if a sadness rises up before you larger than any you have ever seen; if a restiveness, like light and cloud-shadows, passes over your hands and over all you do. You must think that something is happening with you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand; it will not let you fall." from "Letters to a Young Poet"
- Thomas Merton, "If you want to identify me, ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat,
or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I am living for, in detail, ask me
what I think is keeping me from living fully for the thing I want to live for."
- Nikolai Berdyaer, "Our greatest need is to make life fiery, creative, and capable of spiritual struggle."
- Eugene Peterson, "the Christian life is a dancing, leaping, daring life."
- Madeleine L'Engle, "Those who believe they believe in God but without passion in the heart, without anguish of mind, without uncertainty, without doubt, and even at times without despair, believe only in the idea of God, and not in God Himself."
- Anne Morrow Lindbergh, "Good communication is as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after."
- Mark Twain, "Life is short, break the rules, forgive quickly, kiss slowly, love truly, laugh uncontrollably, and never regret anything that made you smile. Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails."
- Teresa of Avila, "You pay God a Compliment by asking great things of Him."
- Paulo Coelho, "In his or her life, each person can take one of two attitudes: to build or to plant. Builders may take years over their tasks, but one day they will finish what they are doing. Then they will stop, hemmed in by their own walls. Life becomes meaningless once the building is finished. Those who plant suffer the storms and the seasons and rarely rest. Unlike a building, a garden never stops growing. And by its constant demands on the gardener's attentions, it makes of the gardener's life a great adventure.", from "Brida"
- Pema Chodron, "We can try to control the uncontrollable by looking for security and predictability, by always hoping to be comfortable and safe. But the truth is that we can never avoid uncertainty. This not knowing is part of the adventure, and it's also what makes us afraid.... The central question of a warrior's training is not how we avoid uncertainty and fear but how we relate to discomfort."
- Jawaharlal Nehru, “We live in a wonderful world that is full of beauty, charm and adventure. There is no end to the adventures that we can have if only we seek them with our eyes open.”
- Andre Gide, “One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.”
- Trevor Noah, "I come from a world where there was no chance for me. Every chance I've taken is the one that's impossible. But I always say to people, 'Why do the possible thing? It's boring if you succeed. Try The impossible thing.'" as quoted in "O" magazine August 2018
- Eugene Peterson, "When the judgment was over, the people had nothing left to boast about: no population, no economy, no buildings, no religion. It had all been razed to the ground. The judgment removed what they had thought was the center of their lives...money...government...religious ceremonies...but God remained. When the judgment had done its work, HE was the center- the center of their individual lives and the center of their communal life. As a result, the people learned to worship. They learned to administer justice. They learned to show mercy. They learned to live by faith in God and by obedience to his Word." The Message Devotional Bible p. 1010
- Peter Kreeft, "Jesus was not nice. He was good, and he was love itself, but he was not nice. He was shocking. If you are not shocked by Jesus, you are not awake. You have been lulled to sleep by familiarity... The 'lesson' of the shocking thing he did is obviously that we, if we are to be his followers, must do that same kind of thing... But notice that the way I just put it is not shocking. It's abstract; it's a nice-sounding principle. It sounds safe, not shocking... Suppose Jesus had merely preached that we should endure our sufferings in faith and hope... We would smile sleepily, and say: 'Yes, that's true. he is right....' It doesn't really cost anything to say that. And it certainly doesn't shock anyone.... We need to be shocked because we are asleep most of the time, because that's the most comfortable place we can be, asleep. And we need to be shocked because we are afraid to wake up from our nice, soft, comfortable dreams into the world of hard, concrete reality, and so we reduce Jesus' shocking, concrete action to a safe, abstract principle. He does the opposite; he makes the principle a concrete reality... Jesus explained the lesson, and he didn't say, 'See? What I did is just a concrete symbol of the abstract principle that it's good to be good.' He said, 'As I have done for you, you should also do.'... Faith alone is not enough. It needs to become concrete in actions. No one can see your faith, but they can see your works of love.... Jesus did not give us an ideal to admire; he gave us a commandment to obey."
- Ellen Ott Marshall, Christians In the Public Square
- What a difference it “would make if Christians entered the public square not as a force for further division, but as embodiments of a love that insists upon relationship”.
- “I believe Christians should engage politics with a love that risks not being reciprocated, an unconditional love for all, a love that makes no distinction between friend and enemy.”
- “Transformation requires that we disrupt the pattern. If I respond to hate in kind, then I foreclose the possibility of a new opportunity in the future. But if I respond to hate with love, then I have introduced a new possibility; I have created a space for love to grow.”
- "I cannot overemphasize this point: mine is not a call for agreement or even for unity. It is a call to practice love in our dealings with one another, confrontational as they may be. We must learn to challenge each other without denying our common humanity and to perceive our deep interrelatedness without denying our differences. My goal is not to end political and religious disagreement; it is to establish the bottom line of nonviolence in thought, word, and deed."