-- Bhagavad Gita 8:14
"Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be."
-- Thomas a Kempis (1380-1471)
"If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel's will save it. For what does it profit a man, to gain the whole world and forfeit his life?"
-- Jesus
"It is poverty to kill a child so that you may live as you wish"
-- Mother Teresa's quote
" It is a dangerous business to arrive in eternity with possibilities that one has prevented from becoming acualities. Possibility is a hint from God. A person must follow it. If God does not want it, let God hinder it; the person must not hinder it."
-- Soren Kierkegaard
"I don't think of the misery, but of all the beauty that remains."
-- Anne Frank
“You have been with God every night since those first nights in which, as an infant, you drifted off to sleep, held by your mother in a darkening room."
-- James Finley
"To grasp God in all things--this is the sign of your new birth."
-- Meister Eckhart
"Every time you make a choice, you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before. And, taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing either into a Heaven creature or into a hellish creature -- either into a creature that is in harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow creatures and with itself. To be the one kind of creature is Heaven: that is, it is joy, and peace, and knowledge, and power. To be the other means madness, horror, idiocy, rage, impotence, and eternal loneliness. Each of us at each moment is progressing to the one state or the other."
-- C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity [1952]
"For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him."
-- John 3:16
"Our job is not to straighten each other out, but to help each other up."
-- Neva Cole
"Do not neglect the gift that is within you."
-- 2 Timothy 4:14
"If beings knew, as I know, the results of giving and sharing, they would not eat without having given, nor would the stain of selfishness overcome their minds. Even if it were their last bite, their last mouthful, they would not eat without having shared, if there were someone to receive their gift."
-- The Buddha (Itivuttaka Sutra)
"The applications to our spiritual and moral life are easy. You are the tree, the spiritual life is the sap running through you; it’s either God’s grace, or the poison of sin. And the moral life is what your life, then, produces. Your actions are the fruit of what’s inside of you... I still work, as long as God’s life flows within me; as long as my heart is alive with God’s love. But if I shut out God/ turn off the current—the light goes off inside me. Living in habitual sin is like being dead inside. And from my unloving heart comes the stench of greed, lust, arrogance, self-centeredness, vanity, gossip, anger, profanity, crudeness, and a dullness of heart which begins to find even the neon lights sickening…The mistakes and sins of our past don’t matter one diddle to God when we come to Him with a repentant heart. His grace makes us new. He rejoices that we come back to Him."
-- Fr. Jacob Restrick (2-25-01 Homily)
"Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken winged bird that cannot fly."
-- From "Dreams" by Langston Hughes (1902-1967), African American Poet
"The modern city hardly knows a pure darkness or true silence anymore, nor does it know the effect of a single small light or that of a lonely distant shout."
-- Johan Huizinga
"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. Explore. Dream. Discover."
-- Mark Twain (1835 - 1910)
"What you have become is the price you paid to get what you used to want."
-- Mignon McLaughlin, American Journalist, Author
"We are judged by what we love."
-- Frank Sheed
"There are no secrets to success. Don't waste time looking for them. Success is the result of perfection, hard work, learning from failure, loyalty to those for whom you work, and persistence."
-- Colin Powell
"Skate to where the puck is going to be, not to where it has been."
-- Wayne Gretzky
"God created the mountain. Nobody tells the mountain that it must be better. We are at least as good as the mountain".
-- Scott Cooper
Lord make me an instrument of thy peace ...
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy;
O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love; for it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
-- Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi
"Being a good friend is not letting a new person sit alone."
-- Shannon Hullinger (Age 7 quoted in her teacher's newsletter)
"Christianity even when watered down is hot enough to boil all modern society to rags."
-- G. K. Chesterton
"Most of one's life...is one prolonged effort to prevent thinking."
-- Aldous Huxley
"You cannot moralize a lie."
-- Adam Randall
"We are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead."
-- Thomas Jefferson
"Pensacola . . . where I learned that becoming nothing is everything."
-- (Written on a stone wall)
"What does not satisfy when we find it, was not the thing we were desiring."
-- C.S. Lewis
"We face a world that is too precious to neglect. We have the remedy for the ills of the world that are too wonderful to withhold. We have a Christ who is too glorious to hide. We have an adventure that is too thrilling to miss."
-- Ravi Zacharias
"The loneliest moment in life is when you have done that which you thought would deliver the ultimate, and it has let you down."
-- Ravi Zacharias
"Sometimes I think war is God's way of teaching us geography."
--Paul Rodriguez
"He does not believe, that does not live according to his belief. "
-- Thomas Fuller (1608-1661)
"To see God is the hightest aspiration of man, and has preoccupied the rarest human spirits at all times. Seeing God means understanding, seeing into the mystery of things. It is, or should be, the essential quest of universities like this one, and of their students and their staff. Note that the realization of this quest is achieved, not through great and good deeds, nor even through thought, however perceptive and enlightened, certainly not through sensations, however generated, nor what is called success, however glittering. The words are clear enough--Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God."
-- Malcolm Muggeridge
"What are we to do about it, this crazy relapse into moral chaos and dimentia? I never met a man made happy by money or worldly success or sensual indulgence, still less by the stupefaction of drugs or alcohol. Yet we all, in one way or another, pursue these ends, as the advertiser well knows. . ."
-- Malcolm Muggeridge
"We are separated from one another by an unbridgeable gulf of otherness and strangeness which resists all our attempts to overcome it by means of natural association or emotional or spiritual union. There is no way from one person to another. However loving and sympathetic we try to be, however sound our psychology however frank and open our behaviour we cannot penetrate the incognito of the other man, for there are no direct relationships, not even between soul and soul. Christ stands between us, and we can only get into touch with our neighbors through Him."
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945), The Cost of Discipleship
“Sanctify yourself and you will sanctify society.”
--St. Francis of Assisi
“I myself have learned the value of spinach from Popeye the sailor man.”
-- Fidel Castro, quoted in The New York Times
"And so America: If you want peace, work for justice. If you want justice, defend life. If you want life, embrace the truth - the truth revealed by God…"
-- Pope John Paul II
“I don’t have to be what you want me to be. I’m free to be who I want.”
-- Muhammad Ali
“No man can look with undivided vision at God and at the world of reality so long as God and the world are torn asunder. Try as he may, he can only let his eyes wander distractedly from one to the other. But there is a place at which God and the cosmic reality are reconciled, a place at which God and man have become one. That and that alone is what enables man to set his eyes upon God and the world at the same time. This place does not lie somewhere out beyond reality in the realm of ideas. It lies in the midst of history as a divine miracle. It lies in Jesus Christ, the reconciler of the world.”
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945)
“If we are to be saved, it will be not by Romans but by Saints.”
-- Thomas Cahill (How the Irish Saved Civilization)
“The 21st century will be spiritual or it will not be”
-- Malreaux (as quoted by Thomas Cahill in how the Irish Saved Civilization)
“The great thing, and the only thing, is to adore and praise God.”
-- Thomas Merton (1915-1968)
“Why should men love the Church? Why should they love her laws? She tells them of Life and Death, and of all they would forget. She is tender where they would be hard, and hard where they like to be soft. She tells them of Evil and Sin, and other unpleasant facts. They constantly try to escape from the darkness outside and within by dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good.”
-- T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)
"Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat."
-- Teddy Roosevelt
“What I should really do for Lent, among other things, is saying the things that embarrass me so much - the smart, casual, half-comical statements about everything, statements which I don't mean, and which are, perhaps, not even intended as communication and which express nothing but my insufferable pride.”
-- From the journals of Thomas Merton, Cistercian monk and writer, February 21, 1958.
"Thou hast commanded, and so it is, that every inordinate affection should be its own punishment."
-- St. Augustine (354-430)
"[Christ] is the breathing forth of the heart, life and spirit of God into all the dead race of Adam. He is the seeker, the finder, the restorer of all that, from Cain to the end of time, was lost and dead to the life of God. He is the love that prays for all its murderers; the love that willingly suffers and dies among thieves, that thieves may have a life with him in Paradise; the love that visits publicans, harlots and sinners, and wants and seeks to forgive where most is to be forgiven."
-- William Law (The Spirit of Prayer [1749])
"We have forgotten the gracious hand which has preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and have vainly imagined in the deceitfulness of our hearts that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us."
-- Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)
"To take up the cross of Christ is no great action done once for all; it consists in the continual practice of small duties which are distasteful to us."
-- John Henry Newman (1801-1890)
"Anyway, the way to judge is so simple: Is what I am hearing, if implemented, going to make me more loving, less judgemental, more quick to love, more likely to forgive, more likely to give up bias and prejuidice and judgement, to include? Then it is of God."
-- Lowell Bennion
"Sin is nothing else than that the creature willeth otherwise than God willeth, and contrary to Him."
-- Theologia Germanica [1518]
"What I should really do for Lent, among other things, is stop saying the things that embarrass me so much - the smart, casual, half-comical statements about everything, statements which I don't mean, and which are, perhaps, not even intended as communication and which express nothing but my insufferable pride - Hey, don't say it, but convey it. I suppose this is really a very good situation and I pray that I may use it."
-- From the journals of Thomas Merton, Cistercian monk and writer, February 21, 1958.
"One who uses coercion is guilty of deliberate violence. Coercion is inhuman."
-- Gandhi
"What is faith if it is not translated into action?"
-- Gandhi
"Fear is not a disease of the body; fear kills the soul...A fear-stricken person can never know God, and one who knows God will never fear a mortal man...Where there is fear, there is not religion."
-- Gandhi
"This freedom from all attachment is the realization of God as Truth."
-- Gandhi
"Moral results can only be produced by moral restraints."
-- Gandhi
"Truth is what the voice within tells you."
-- Gandhi
"No man who lives at all lives unto himself--he either helps or hinders all who are in any wise connected with him."
-- Frederick Douglass (Life and Times of Frederick Douglass)
"Truly a paradise could exist wherever material progress and spiritual values could be properly balanced."
-- Malcolm X (Autobiography of Malcolm)
"Every morning, when I wake up, now, I regard it as having another borrowed day . . . each day I live as if I'm already dead."
-- Malcolm X (Autobiography of Malcolm)
"No one can make you feel inferior without your consent."
-- Eleanor Roosevelt
"The greatest truths are the simplest: so are the greatest men."
-- William Shakespeare
"There can be no happiness if the things we believe in are different from the things we do."
-- Freya Stark
"Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in thee."
-- St. Augustine (354-430) (Confessions)
"Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance and order and rhythm and harmony."
-- Thomas Merton
"The great thing and the only thing, is to adore and praise God."
-- Thomas Merton
"What is needed is to lose ourselves completely in God; what is needed is perfect silence, supernatural silence. Pious talk has something revolting about it."
-- Thomas Merton
"I am persuaded that love and humility are the highest attainments in the school of Christ and the brightest evidences that he is indeed our Master."
-- John Newton (1725-1807)
"Religion is not ours till we live by it, till it is the religion of our thoughts, words, and actions, till it goes with us into every place, sits uppermost on every occasion, and forms and governs our hopes and fears, our cares and pleasures."
-- William Law (1686-1761)
"What should one say to an historian, however well meaning, who advocates depriving a community of its history?"
-- George D. Smith
"God is none other than the Saviour of our wretchedness. So we can only know God well by knowing our iniquities... Those who have known God without knowing their wretchedness have not glorified him, but have glorified themselves."
-- Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)
"The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves."
--John Muir
"I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody".
-- Bill Cosby
"Do not fear death so much, but rather the inadequate life"
-- Bertolt Brecht 1932
"A man can carry everything he really needs in his mind, except food and pants."
-- John Myers "Silverlock"
"There is a passion for hunting something, deeply implanted in the human breast."
-- Charles Dickens
"A congressman is a pig. The only way to get his snout from the trough is to rap it sharply with a stick."
-- Henry Adams
"Sentiment without action is ruination of the soul."
-- Edward Abbey
"On the outskirts of every agony sits some observant fellow who points."
-- Virginia Woolf
"Polish comes from the cities, wisdom from the desert."
-- F.H, Dune
"Diplomacy is the art of saying 'nice doggie'...until you can find a rock."
"Pride is what we have. Vanity is what other's have."
"Rights are not the language of democracy. Compromise is what democracy is about. Rights are the language of freedom, and are absolute because their role is to protect our liberty. By using the absolute power of freedom to accomplish reforms of democracy, we have undermined democracy and diminished our freedom."
-- Philip K. Howard (The Death of Common Sense)
"I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man."
-- Thomas Jeffferson
“The hero is known for achievements, the celebrity for well knownness. The hero reveals the possibilities of human nature. The celebrity reveals the possibilities of the press and media. Celebrities are people who make news, but heroes are people who make history…time makes heroes, but dissolves celebrities.”
-- Daniel Boorstin - Pulitzer Prize Winning Author
“Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.”
-- Epicurus
“Evil can no more be charged upon God than darkness can be charged upon the sun.”
-- William Law
“I do not feel obliged to believe that the same god who has endowed us with sense, reason and intellect, has intended us to forgo their use.”
-- Galileo
“A god who would let us prove his existence would be an idol.”
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“Nothing is more scandalous than a man who is proud of his humility.”
-- Marcus Aurelius
“I am but the least of the least, small is my understanding and timid my heart.”
-- Baudonovia
“If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”
-- C.S. Lewis
“The first duty of love is to listen.”
-- Paul Tillich
“There are moments in the lives of all men when you feel yourself belonging to something larger, nobler, more permanent than yourself. This experience is the religious experience.”
-- John Dewey
“There is nothing in all creation so like God as silence.”
-- Meister Eckhart
“Solitude is the furnace of transformation.”
-- Henri Nouwen
“Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim.”
-- Elie Wiesel
“The greatest of all sins is the philosophizing of sin out of existence.”
-- Harold Gardiner
“Tolerance grows only when faith loses certainty; Certainty is murderous.”
-- Will Durrant
“The truth that makes men free, is for the most part, the truth which men prefer not to hear.”
-- Herbert Agar
“The true is Godlike: We do not see it itself: We guess at it through its manifestations.”
-- Goethe
“It does not require many words to speak the truth.”
-- Chief Joseph
“There’s a fine line between fishing and just standing on the shore looking like an idiot.”
-- Stephen Wright (Comedian)
“If we are strong, our character will speak for itself. If we are weak, our words will be of no help.”
-- John Kennedy - November 22, 1963
“I have great faith in the resurrection of all beautiful things except innocence.”
-- Sean Penn - Rolling Stone Magazine
