c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
Persecution happens when we stand in the face of our enemy. Friendship with the world is to conspire with that same enemy.
— Brian       Reynolds, Not of this World: Out of the Mire: Detach from the World and Its Stand Against Christ
To only see ‘death’ in death is to somehow assume that death itself is a barrier so abrupt that God Himself is halted by it. To see ‘life’ in death is to understand that death is a sprawling horizon to a new beginning that God created long before death ever thought to show up.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
The promises of God hold up long after the promises of the world have blown up.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
God has given me both the right and privilege to outrun Him if I so choose. Yet, if I do so, I will have lost the race.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
For a brief moment the previous day, I’d felt a flicker of kinship with him because of my own barrenness, but he brandished his brokenness like a sword, ready to cut anyone who displeased him because someone in Pharaoh’s household had once cut him.
— Kristen Reed, Five Nights With Pharaoh
I tried to close my ears to the strange worshipful chanting and fix my mind on God, but the Egyptians’ idolatry weighed down my weary shoulders and brought tears to my closed eyes.
— Kristen Reed, Five Nights With Pharaoh
Though I’d proven to be a wretched, foolish woman, I knew deep in my broken heart that God was still just as good and loving as he’d been the moment he plucked a rib from Adam’s side and used that bone to give me life.
— Kristen Reed, Out of the Garden
To understand the mysteries of God we must move past the logic of men.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
Despite my best effort to make myself as large as absolutely possible, life will always be larger than me. That simple fact makes God not only a likelihood, but a necessity.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
Spiritual ignorance helps nobody.
— Brian       Reynolds, Kingdom of Darkness in a Fallen World: The truth and origin behind what's been out there all along, hiding in the dark corners of our world.
The greatest men stand on their values and pray on their knees.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
You can’t see anything properly while your eyes are blurred with tears. You can’t, in most things, get what you want if you want it too desperately: anyway, you can’t get the best out of it. ‘Now! Let’s have a real good talk’ reduces everyone to silence. ‘I must get a good sleep tonight’ ushers in hours of wakefulness. Delicious drinks are wastedon a really ravenous thirst. Is it similarly the very intensity of the longing that draws the iron curtain, that makes us feel we are staring into a vacuum when we think about our dead? ‘Them as asks’ (at any rate ‘as asks too importunately’) don’t get. Perhapscan’t.
— C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed
The length of the fall is dictated by how far we had climbed. The outcome of the fall is dictated by whether we’re holding on to that which we’re climbing, or we’re letting God hold onto us.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
You can’t see anything properly while your eyes are blurred with tears. You can’t, in most things, get what you want if you want it too desperately: anyway, you can’t get the best out of it. ‘Now! Let’s have a real good talk’ reduces everyone to silence. ‘I must get a good sleep tonight’ ushers in hours of wakefulness. Delicious drinks are wasted on a really ravenous thirst. Is it similarly the very intensity of the longing that draws the iron curtain, that makes us feel we are staring into a vacuum when we think about our dead? ‘Them as asks’ (at any rate ‘as asks too importunately’) don’t get. Perhapscan’t.
— C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed
When standing face to face with myself, I far too often refuse to look in the mirror. When standing face to face with God, there is no place where a mirror is not.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
You can’t see anything properly while your eyes are blurred with tears. You can’t, in most things, get what you want if you want it too desperately: anyway, you can’t get the best out of it. ‘Now! Let’s have a real good talk’ reduces everyone to silence. ‘I must get a good sleep tonight’ ushers in hours of wakefulness. Delicious drinks are wasted on a really ravenous thirst. Is it similarly the very intensity of the longing that draws the iron curtain, that makes us feel we are staring into a vacuum when we think about our dead? ‘Them as asks’ (at any rate ‘as asks too importunately’) don’t get. Perhaps can’t.
— C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed
The yardstick that we frequently use to determine if something can be restored is based on the handful of inches that we bring to the process, when God shows up with an infinite amount of miles.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
When I pray - I mean really pray - for people and situations throughout the day, I'm a much humbler person and more sensitive to the lives of the people around me. I am not the master of my fate and captain of my soul. I've tried that, and it makes me more of a task master and a jerk. Prayer puts things in God's hands, and I like the Creator's power more than my own.
— Mike Tenbusch, The Jonathan Effect: Helping Kids and Schools Win the Battle Against Poverty
The drum to which we march reveals the conductor to whom we’re listening.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
With God, all things are possible
— Matthew 19:26
I am always trying to figure God out so that I can figure Him in. But after a while I figure that I should just let God be God, and figure that He’ll figure it all out anyway.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
The worst of me is the raw material from which God molds the best of me.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
We are quick to surrender that which we deem as long dead, when God is quick to restore that which He deems as never really having lived.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
The pain that you've been feeling, can't compare to the joy that's coming.
— Romans 8:18
You can’t see anything properly while your eyes are blurred with tears. You can’t, in most things, get what you want if you want it too desperately: anyway, you can’t get the best out of it. ‘Now! Let’s have a real good talk’ reduces everyone to silence. ‘I must get a good sleep tonight’ ushers in hours of wakefulness. Delicious drinks are wastedon a really ravenous thirst. Is it similarly the very intensity of the longing that draws the iron curtain, that makes us feel we are staring into a vacuum when we think about our dead? ‘Them as asks’ (at any rate ‘as asks too importunately’) don’t get. Perhaps can’t.
— C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed
Without a doubt, the most ingenious plan I could ever hope to devise would be to trade my plans for God’s.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
The worst thing that I can do is humanize God. The second worst thing that I can do is deify myself. And the best thing that I can do is to avoid both.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
Rarely do I truly understand the disease which ails me. Therefore, rarely do I truly understand the fix that would cure me. And so maybe I should truly contemplate how rarely I recognize that God understands both.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
I’m Temple Claybourne, an upright, warm-blooded hairy mammal, Caucasian, skidding into my fourth decade of existence, the progeny of meat-eating Anglo-Saxon tribal chieftains, left-handed, flat of foot, with low cholesterol and a predictably receding hairline, carrying a zero debt load, a nervous driver, nervous in crowds, nervous around women, hungry with curiosity, a collector of comforting, unnecessary things.
— Loyd Boldman, The Gravity Addict
The extent of God’s grace always eclipses the extent of my grotesqueness. Therefore, I can never be bad enough for God to tell me that He’s had enough.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
I cannot create greatness as I can only create weak facsimiles. And in sorting through the innumerable facsimiles around me, I will only happen upon true greatness when I happen upon the true God.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
If I must know something in order to believe in it, what I am able to believe in will be severely limited. If I choose to believe in something in order to know it, then what I believe in can be boundless.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
For the Word, realizing that in no other way would the corruption of human beings be undone except, simply, by dying, yet being immortal and the Son of the Father of the Word was not able to die, for this reason he takes to himself a body capable of death, in order that it, participating in the Word who is above all, might be sufficient for death on behalf of all, and through the indwelling Word would remain incorruptible, and so corruption might henceforth cease from all by the grace of the resurrection.
— Athanasius of Alexandria, On the Incarnation
His ideal is a man who, having worked all day for the good of posterity (if that is his vocation), washes his mind of the whole subject, commits the issue to Heaven, and returns at once to the patience or gratitude demanded by the moment that is passing over him. But we want a man hag-ridden by the Future—haunted by visions of an imminent heaven or hell upon earth—ready to break the Enemy’s commands in the present if by so doing we make him think he can attain the one or avert the other—dependent for his faith on the success or failure of schemes whose end he will not live to see. We want a whole race perpetually in pursuit of the rainbow’s end, never honest, nor kind, nor happy now, but always using as mere fuel wherewith to heap the altar of the future every real gift which is offered them in the Present.
— C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
I say that many of these heresies, independently of the doctrines they assert, encounter success among the simple because they suggest to such people the possibility of a different life. I say that very often the simple do not know much about doctrine. I say that often hordes of simple people have confused Catharist preaching with that of the Patarines, and these together with that of the Spirituals. The life of the simple, Abo, is not illuminated by learning and by the lively sense of distinctions that makes us wise. And it is haunted by illness and poverty, tongue-tied by ignorance. Joining a heretical group, for many of them, is often only another way of shouting their own despair. You may burn a cardinal’s house because you want to perfect the life of the clergy, but also because you believe that the hell he preaches does not exist.
— Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose
In the world as it is, torn with agonies and dissensions, we need some direction for our souls which is never away from us; which, without enslaving us or narrowing our vision, enters into every detail of our life. Everyone longs for some such inward rule, a universal rule as big as the immeasurable law of love, yet as little as the narrowness of our daily routine. It must be so truly part of us all that it makes us all one, and yet to each one the secret of his own life with God.To this need, the imitation of Our Lady is the answer; in contemplating her we find intimacy with God, the law which is the lovely yoke of the one irresistible love.
— Caryll Houselander, The Reed of God
Christ must be born from every soul, formed in every life. If we had a picture of Our Lady's personality we might be dazzled into thinking that only one sort of person could form Christ in himself, and we should miss the meaning of our own being.Nothing but things essential for us are revealed to us about the Mother of God: the fact that she was wed to the Holy Spirit and bore Christ into the world.Our crowning joy is that she did this as a lay person and through the ordinary daily life that we all live; through natural love made supernatural, as the water at Cana was, at her request, turned into wine.
— Caryll Houselander, The Reed of God
No person is 100% faithful. It is only when we see the depth of our own unfaithfulness that we can truly begin to understand the faithfulness of Jesus. He is faithful even when we are not. Thankfully, we have a perfect God who loves us imperfect people.
— Jayce O'Neal
You made a lifetime commitment before God and the world. A silly thing like a divorce doesn’t reverse it.
— Kellyn Roth, The Lady of the Vineyard
We human beings are story-tellers, we pass on our values through the stories we tell. This is particularly true of Catholics, who get their identity through their histories, which they see as salvation history linking them to the saving actions of Christ. So, for Catholics, doing history – passing on the values by telling stories – is a pastoral imperative. We must look where we have been in order to know where we are going.
— Edmund Campion, Australian Catholic Lives
We...advance toward a state of society in which not only each man but every impulse in each man claims carte blanche.
— C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' For our sakes Jesus went through all the suffering we may ever have to endure, and because he cried out those words we may cry them out, too.
— Madeleine L'Engle, The Rock That Is Higher: Story as Truth
Whenever Christ calls us, his call leads us to death.
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship
Because He loves us. And love does not demand enslavement, but... love desires a partnership. Our Creator seeks true communication between us and Him. He won't force anyone to love Him. We decide for ourselves.
— R.J. Larson, Prophet
There is no New Testament basis for a linking of church and state until Christ, the King returns. The whole "Constantine mentality" from the fourth century up to our day was a mistake. Constantine, as the Roman Emperor, in 313 ended the persecution of Christians. Unfortunately, the support he gave to the church led by 381 to the enforcing of Christianity, by Theodosius I, as the official state religion. Making Christianity the official state religion opened the way for confusion up till our own day. There have been times of very good government when this interrelationship of church and state has been present. But through the centuries it has caused great confusion between loyalty to the state and loyalty to Christ, between patriotism and being a Christian. We must not confuse the Kingdom of God with our country. To say it another way: "We should not wrap our Christianity in our national flag.
— Francis A. Schaeffer, A Christian Manifesto
Art is the effort to appreciate and express the God who is its Beauty.
— William Temple, Fellowship with God
God's 'permission' of evil so multiplied is not simply to be accounted for by his respecting our free will. He takes the harms we mutually inflict and overrules them for our good.
— Jocelyn Gibb, Light on C. S. Lewis
Lewis was an apologist from temper, from conviction, and from modesty. From temper, for he loved argument. From conviction, being traditionally orthodox. From modesty, because he laid no claim either to the learning which would have made him a theologian or to the grace which would have made him a spiritual guide.
— Jocelyn Gibb, Light on C. S. Lewis
Even a child could see the division between what the Galileans [i.e., Christians] say they believe and what, in fact, they do believe, as demonstrated by their actions. A religion of brotherhood and mildness which daily murders those who disagree with its doctrines can only be thought hypocrite, or worse.
— Gore Vidal, Julian
His whole effort, therefore, will be to get the man’s mind off the subject of his own value altogether. He would rather the man thought himself a great architect or a great poet and then forgot about it, than that he should spend much time and pains trying to think himself a bad one. Your efforts to instil either vain glory or false modesty into the patient will therefore be met from the Enemy’s side with the obvious reminder that a man is not usually called upon to have an opinion of his own talents at all, since he can very well go on improving them to the best of his ability without deciding on his own precise niche in the temple of Fame...The Enemy will also try to render real in the patient’s mind...the doctrine that they did not create themselves, that their talents were given them, and that they might as well be proud of the colour of their hair...Even of his sins the Enemy does not want him to think too much: once they are repented, the sooner the man turns his attention outward, the better the Enemy is pleased
— C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
But Christianity is a queer business! If at the outset we try to do anything, we get nothing; if we seek to attain something, we miss everything. For Christianity begins not with a big DO, but with a big DONE.
— Watchman Nee, Sit, Walk, Stand
God is good all the time!!
— Fikre Fikadu
Christian theism, to those who believe it, commends itself as fact, not theory, by the sheer multiplicity of its bearings. Were it a speculation, it would surely face a single field of enquiry: it would assign the cause of the world, or the principle of duty, or the aim of existence, or the means of spiritual regeneration. If an equal light falls from a single source in all these directions at once, that source must seem to have the richness of a reality, rather than the abstract poverty of an idea.
— Jocelyn Gibb, Light on C. S. Lewis
Muddled minds read him, and found themselves moving with delight in a world of clarity.
— Jocelyn Gibb, Light on C. S. Lewis
God's goodness will not mean a spoiling indulgence
—  [H]is aim need not be our ease so much as our perfection.
If the requirements of world-structure are so inexorable, what scope is there for a free providence in distributing pleasures and pains? If pains are the natural rubs of a world-structure bearing on sentient creatures, what need have we to view them as instruments of a disciplinary providence?
— Jocelyn Gibb, Light on C. S. Lewis
What will has caused, will must be brought to correct.
— Jocelyn Gibb, Light on C. S. Lewis
No wild beasts are so deadly to humans as most Christians are to each other.
— Ammianus Marcellinus, The Later Roman Empire
The primary function of mental pain, says Lewis, is to force our misdirectedness on our attention. But just as it belongs to our fallen state to be blind to holiness until we suffer the consequences of sin, and blind to a higher good until natural satisfactions are snatched from us; so equally it belongs to our state that we cannot achieve disinterestedness until it costs us pain.
— Jocelyn Gibb, Light on C. S. Lewis
Is romantic yearning an appetite for [H]eaven, or is it the ultimate refinement of covetousness?
— Jocelyn Gibb, Light on C. S. Lewis
Man, to Lewis, is an immortal subject; pains are his moral remedies, salutary disciplines, willing sacrifices, playing their part in a drama of interchange between God and him.
— Jocelyn Gibb, Light on C. S. Lewis
When under suffering we see good men go to pieces we do not witness the failure of a moral discipline to take effect
—  we witness the advance of death where death comes by inches.
I believe, to be sure, that any man who reaches Heaven will find that what he abandoned (even in plucking out his right eye) has not been lost: that the kernel of what he was really seeking even in his most depraved wishes will be there, beyond expectation, waiting for him in ‘the High Countries’.
— C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce
The only consistent response for a relativist is, "Pushing morality is wrong for me, but that's just my personal opinion, and has nothing to do with you. Please ignore me.
— Gregory Koukl, Tactics: A Game Plan for Discussing Your Christian Convictions
The art of happy-making begins when we find our happiness within instead of without.
— Jennifer Dukes Lee, The Happiness Dare: Pursuing Your Heart's Deepest, Holiest, and Most Vulnerable Desire
In a very real sense, every person who denies God is living of borrowed capital. He enjoys living as if the world is filled with morality, meaning, order and beauty, yet he denies the God whose existence makes such things possible. When you start with theism - "in the beginning God"- these destinations make complete sense. When you start with materialism though - "in the beginning, the particles" - that route takes you over a cliff of absurdity and despair.
— Gregory Koukl, Tactics: A Game Plan for Discussing Your Christian Convictions
If I see God as nothing more than a caricature of history or imagination I cannot do anything less than make myself my own ‘god’. And once I realize that in doing so my rendition of being a ‘god’ is embarrassingly inferior to the very caricature I am mimicking, I quickly come to realize that maybe the only thing that can be ‘god’ is a God. And if that is the case, I suddenly find myself hounded by the stunning reality that God is not a caricature.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
To illustrate the nature of this theandric reciprocity, Thomas invokes, as an example, the physical touch of Jesus’s hand: “he wrought divine things humanly, as when he healed the leper with a touch.” The touch of a human being is not in itself miraculous, and even in Jesus this human action is not humanly healing. The miraculous fact of the healing power of this human touch, rather, as Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange puts it, “proceeds from God as the principal cause and from Christ’s human nature as the instrumental cause.” Jesus works divine things humanly. More ultimately, Jesus wills the divine will of salvation humanly. And so he wills theandrically in the sense that what he wills has an “infinite value” that “derives from the divine suppositum that is the agent which operates”. The deifying effects of the Incarnation are thus contingent on the theandric fact of the interpenetrating unity of divine-human operations.
— Aaron Riches
The older we get, the bigger the catalog of failures Satan can throw in our faces. You may think, ‘I don’t have anything to offer.’ But you can teach out of your failures as well as your successes (p. 223).
— Nancy Leigh DeMoss, True Woman 201: Interior Design - Ten Elements of Biblical Womanhood
I now know that God is not a divinity to be met on Sundays in church.
— Patty Ptak Kogutek, Ed.D., G-vites ~ Everyday Invitations From God: A Handbook for Practical Spirituality
God will always watch out for our best, providing us with what we need and a soft landing when we seem to be falling.
— Patty Ptak Kogutek, Ed.D., G-vites ~ Everyday Invitations From God: A Handbook for Practical Spirituality
Bring on the people you want me to love, the situations you want me to take on, and the lessons you want me to learn.
— Patty Ptak Kogutek, Ed.D., G-vites ~ Everyday Invitations From God: A Handbook for Practical Spirituality
I will live each minute in gratitude.
— Patty Ptak Kogutek, Ed.D., G-vites ~ Everyday Invitations From God: A Handbook for Practical Spirituality
We may all be on the same journey but not necessarily on the same road.
— Patty Ptak Kogutek, Ed.D., G-vites ~ Everyday Invitations From God: A Handbook for Practical Spirituality
I could imagine a hot day. I could imagine a number of curious people spontaneously following a young man of great wisdom, a young man rumored to wield power over the mysterious afflictions they saw every day in their villages. They are not sure where they are going, and once the young man stops to speak, they find themselves on the other side of the Sea of Galilee, the nearest town now very far away. Many are feeling hunger pangs, uncertain of why they have come so far. What will they do? One of the young man's friends arrives, unexpectedly bearing food. The people are happy and relieved, and among them talk circulates of the surprising tenderness with which the wise young man hands out victuals to the people, few of whom he knows well.Eventually, the story is written down. Years go by, then decades, and in this time the crowd increases from fifty to five hundred to five thousand. The unexpected arrival of the follower bearing food vanishes from the telling. An event experienced by its participants in miraculous terms is transformed into a miraculous story. The core of the story remains the same: the hungry were fed when they were not expecting to be, and the young man who fed them do so of his own volition. You could base a code of ethics on a single act of unexpected munificence, and perhaps even fashion from it a crude if supple morality, but you would not have a cosmology, or anything close to one, and cosmologies were what most people craved.
— Tom Bissell, Apostle: Travels Among the Tombs of the Twelve
Eating a twin banana does not necessarily mean that you are enjoying a double portion.
— Hanimoz Obey
Irony: When those who call others a 'threat to Christianity' reject the crucial tenets of their own faith themselves.
— Christina Engela, Autumn Burning: Dreadtime Stories for the Wicked Soul
Christianity is constantly in danger of being hijacked by people who act out in hatred - by people who will not even hear the cries of their victims, let alone own up to their guilt.
— Christina Engela, Demonspawn
Yeah, it's kind of shitty," I say. I add the shitty on purpose as a kind of a test. I’ve been using it a lot lately to weed the dangerous Christians out of my life: the ones who have the power to hurt me. Throw out a shit or a damn or a what the hell, and see if you get The Look. Watch to see if the person shifts uncomfortably or looks down at her hands … then you know: this is a Dangerous Christian. The kind who will not be able to handle the truth of your pain, the kind that requires some swearing.
— Addie Zierman, When We Were on Fire: A Memoir of Consuming Faith, Tangled Love, and Starting Over
WHEN SIN HINDERS YOUR WORSHIP.God will never delay His promise.You have delayed Him."..However, when the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth?" Luke 18:8b
— Mac Canoza
The only marches I have ever witnessed under a banner of so-called "Christianity" have been to enforce oppression and incite hatred and intolerance - and to deprive people of their equal civil rights.
— Christina Engela, Bugspray
The desire to experience new kinds of community led a number of thoughtful and idealistic people to reject the patterns of vocation, family life and religion with which they had grown up. Their attempt to establish new patterns of social bonding in uncontaminated rural retreats can be seen as a secular monasticism, but they often discovered that to abolish the boundaries of authority, family and property created a whole series of problems which they did not have the spiritual and personal resources to solve.At their best, such groups have opened up new horizons of discipleship, but they have often learned some hard lessons about the intractable sinfulness and selfishness of partly-redeemed human nature.
— Ian Breward, Australia: "The Most Godless Place Under Heaven'?
In God, happiness and purposeful work are a package deal.
— Jennifer Dukes Lee, The Happiness Dare: Pursuing Your Heart's Deepest, Holiest, and Most Vulnerable Desire
God will never delay His promise.You have delayed Him.
— Mac Canoza
Live life to the fullest or foolest.
— Mac Canoza
He remembered an old tale which his father was fond of telling him—the story of Eos Amherawdur (the Emperor Nightingale). Very long ago, the story began, the greatest and the finest court in all the realms of faery was the court of the Emperor Eos, who was above all the kings of the Tylwydd Têg, as the Emperor of Rome is head over all the kings of the earth. So that even Gwyn ap Nudd, whom they now call lord over all the fair folk of the Isle of Britain, was but the man of Eos, and no splendour such as his was ever seen in all the regions of enchantment and faery. Eos had his court in a vast forest, called Wentwood, in the deepest depths of the green-wood between Caerwent and Caermaen, which is also called the City of the Legions; though some men say that we should rather name it the city of the Waterfloods. Here, then, was the Palace of Eos, built of the finest stones after the Roman manner, and within it were the most glorious chambers that eye has ever seen, and there was no end to the number of them, for they could not be counted. For the stones of the palace being immortal, they were at the pleasure of the Emperor. If he had willed, all the hosts of the world could stand in his greatest hall, and, if he had willed, not so much as an ant could enter into it, since it could not be discerned. But on common days they spread the Emperor's banquet in nine great halls, each nine times larger than any that are in the lands of the men of Normandi. And Sir Caw was the seneschal who marshalled the feast; and if you would count those under his command—go, count the drops of water that are in the Uske River. But if you would learn the splendour of this castle it is an easy matter, for Eos hung the walls of it with Dawn and Sunset. He lit it with the sun and moon. There was a well in it called Ocean. And nine churches of twisted boughs were set apart in which Eos might hear Mass; and when his clerks sang before him all the jewels rose shining out of the earth, and all the stars bent shining down from heaven, so enchanting was the melody. Then was great bliss in all the regions of the fair folk. But Eos was grieved because mortal ears could not hear nor comprehend the enchantment of their song. What, then, did he do? Nothing less than this. He divested himself of all his glories and of his kingdom, and transformed himself into the shape of a little brown bird, and went flying about the woods, desirous of teaching men the sweetness of the faery melody. And all the other birds said: "This is a contemptible stranger." The eagle found him not even worthy to be a prey; the raven and the magpie called him simpleton; the pheasant asked where he had got that ugly livery; the lark wondered why he hid himself in the darkness of the wood; the peacock would not suffer his name to be uttered. In short never was anyone so despised as was Eos by all the chorus of the birds. But wise men heard that song from the faery regions and listened all night beneath the bough, and these were the first who were bards in the Isle of Britain.
— Arthur Machen, The Secret Glory
So at last Ilar Sant came to this wood, which people now call St. Hilary's wood because they have forgotten all about Ilar. And he was weary with his wandering, and the day was very hot; so he stayed by this well and began to drink. And there on that great stone he saw the shining fish, and so he rested, and built an altar and a church of willow boughs, and offered the sacrifice not only for the quick and the dead, but for all the wild beasts of the woods and the streams."And when this blessed Ilar rang his holy bell and began to offer, there came not only the Prince and his servants, but all the creatures of the wood. There, under the hazel boughs, you might see the hare, which flies so swiftly from men, come gently and fall down, weeping greatly on account of the Passion of the Son of Mary. And, beside the hare, the weasel and the pole-cat would lament grievously in the manner of penitent sinners; and wolves and lambs together adored the saint's hierurgy; and men have beheld tears streaming from the eyes of venomous serpents when Ilar Agios uttered 'Curiluson' with a loud voice—since the serpent is not ignorant that by its wickedness sorrow came to the whole world. And when, in the time of the holy ministry, it is necessary that frequent Alleluyas should be chanted and vociferated, the saint wondered what should be done, for as yet none in that place was skilled in the art of song. Then was a great miracle, since from all the boughs of the wood, from every bush and from every green tree, there resounded Alleluyas in enchanting and prolonged harmony; never did the Bishop of Rome listen to so sweet a singing in his church as was heard in this wood. For the nightingale and thrush and blackbird and blackcap, and all their companions, are gathered together and sing praises to the Lord, chanting distinct notes and yet concluding in a melody of most ravishing sweetness; such was the mass of the Fisherman. Nor was this all, for one day as the saint prayed beside the well he became aware that a bee circled round and round his head, uttering loud buzzing sounds, but not endeavouring to sting him. To be short; the bee went before Ilar, and led him to a hollow tree not far off, and straightway a swarm of bees issued forth, leaving a vast store of wax behind them. This was their oblation to the Most High, for from their wax Ilar Sant made goodly candles to burn at the Offering; and from that time the bee is holy, because his wax makes light to shine upon the Gifts.
— Arthur Machen, The Secret Glory
The fact that your current station in life would seem to conspire against your usefulness to God is of no consequence.
— Jonathan Martin, Prototype: What Happens When You Discover You're More Like Jesus Than You Think?
You will find complete, absolute atheism, not a conscious atheism, but rather the animal atheism of an uneducated man, the atheism of a cat or dog. They call themselves believers, and they lie: they neither believe in nor rely upon that God to whom woman, children, idealists, and people in misfortune like to turn.
— N.G. Pomyalovsky, Seminary Sketches
In matters of conscience and basic convictions it is unlawful and pernicious for anyone to forcibly intrude upon another's beliefs; therefore, because I am a man of rational convictions, I will not go out and demolish churches, drown monks, or rip down icons from my friends' walls because in so doing I will not spread my convictions; human beings must be educated, not coerced, I am not the enemy, I am not the tyrant of the conscience of true believers.
— N.G. Pomyalovsky, Seminary Sketches
These ordained atheists cultivate their egoism, the source of every atheist's activity, but they defile it and it becomes repulsive whereas the egoism of good atheists is a beautiful principle. They preach raging sermons not because they fear for the eternal damnation of their fold, but because they fear for the eternal damnation of their gold; before every sermon they feel their pockets to see if there's a hole, and if there is, they mend it with a sermon instead of a patch.
— N.G. Pomyalovsky, Seminary Sketches
The sinner does not need more grace than the saint, nor does the immature and undisciplined believer need more than the godly, zealous missionary. We all need the same amount of grace because the "currency" of our good works is debased and worthless before God.
— Jerry Bridges, Transforming Grace: Living Confidently in God's Unfailing Love
We've seen how beautiful it can be to follow Jesus into this new way of being human. But one of the things I love most about Jesus is how much He loves humanity in its brokenness. If He was surrounded by fractured people then, why would we expect it to be any different now? I actually think it is a larger mistake when we Christians attempt to pretend that our lives are more together than they really are in order to "manage our image" before the broader culture. Come look at our perfect church and our perfect family. And if you join us, maybe one day you, too, can have a perfect life! That kind of spin is a breeding ground for disappointment.
— Jonathan Martin, Prototype: What Happens When You Discover You're More Like Jesus Than You Think?
Patiently, hopefully, actively we are waiting for Jesus. And yet here is the astonishing twist: As we wait for our Lord and the bodily resurrection yet to come for the departed, the world waits for us. As we long for God, the world is longing for God in us.
— Jonathan Martin, Prototype: What Happens When You Discover You're More Like Jesus Than You Think?
Though lip service is paid to the gospel of grace, many Christians live as if only personal discipline and self-denial will mold the perfect me. The emphasis is on what I do rather than on what God is doing. In this curious process God is a benign old spectator in the bleachers who cheers when I show up for morning quiet time.
— Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
It's easy to get thousands of people to come to your Church. Easy. Just have good entertainment. And so you go to worship services and you're entertained by music, the lights, the action...you're entertained. The preacher comes out, he has lots of funny stories or heart-rending stories and you'll live contented. You live satisfied emotionally. I'm for numbers, I'm for reaching people for Christ. But when you become numbers-driven, then everything in the worship service is aimed at that. If you have numbers, you have to have big Churches. If you have big Churches, you gotta have big debts. So you have to get people to come, you gotta entertain them, and cause them to be emotionally satisfied. So, we're back into this man-centeredness that has destroyed worship service in the 20th century.
— Dr. Joe Morecraft
The entire contradictory package of Christianity was present in the Eucharist. A sign of unconditional acceptance and forgiveness, it was doled out and rationed to insiders; a sign of unity, it divided people; a sign of the most common and ordinary human reality, it was rarefied and theorized nearly to death.
— Sara  Miles, Take This Bread: A Radical Conversion
What happened once I started distributing communion was the truly disturbing, dreadful realization about Christianity: You can't be a Christian by yourself.
— Sara  Miles, Take This Bread: A Radical Conversion
I read the story about the loaves and fishes and thought about Jesus gazing at the hungry crowd, saying to his anxious, doubting, screwed-up followers: "You give them something to eat." So we did.
— Sara  Miles, Take This Bread: A Radical Conversion
I'm learning to practice gratitude for a healthy body, even if it's rounder than I'd like it to be. I’m learning to take up all the space I need, literally and figuratively, even though we live in a world that wants women to be tiny and quiet. To feed one’s body, to admit one’s hunger, to look one's appetite straight in the eye without fear or shame—this is controversial work in our culture. Part of being a Christian means practicing grace in all sorts of big and small and daily ways, and my body gives me the opportunity to demonstrate grace, to make peace with imperfection every time I see myself in the mirror. On my best days, I practice grace and patience with myself, knowing that I can't extend grace and patience if I haven't tasted it.
— Shauna Niequist, Bread and   Wine: A Love Letter to Life Around the Table with Recipes
We are not quite sure that the Sermon on the Mount is the Sermon for the mart. We are not sure, and an unsure place is an unsafe place* We must go on or go back. We must be more Christian or less.
— E. Stanley Jones, Christ of the Mount
Physical brains are subject to the laws of physics; mental states are subject to the laws of logic. Those who think mental states are entirely physical hold a logically contradictory position. In order to think rationally about their thoughts , they must have the freedom to do so, but this freedom is unavailable if the laws of physics and chemistry are controlling their thoughts.
— J. Warner Wallace, God's Crime Scene: A Cold-Case Detective Examines the Evidence for a Divinely Created Universe
It is an alarming experience to be, in your person, representing Christianity to the natives.
— Isak Dinesen, Out of Africa
Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever and He doesn't need a makeover!
— Kingsley Opuwari Manuel
But should not atheists have an equal obligation to explain the origin of pleasure in a world of randomness and meaninglessness?
— Philip Yancey, Soul Survivor: How Thirteen Unlikely Mentors Helped My Faith Survive the Church
The moment a mind closes is the moment it can no longer evolve. Intellectual inertia soon follows. I suppose that in many ways this is one of my main objections to theism; it assumes that all questions are already firmly answered. There is no room for curiosity. A closed question does not lead to other questions. Thus, there is no progression, no evolution, no molting. This is no good for me. I want to evolve. I want to progress. I want to molt. And I want to keep learning about the real mysteries of this Universe.
— Michael Vito Tosto, Portrait of an Infidel: The Acerbic Account of How a Passionate Christian Became an Ardent Atheist
The true nature of the Christian’s bondage is this: faith commands his every move, his every thought, and his every inclination. Moreover, because faith is tenacious by nature, and because it comes with this attendant stigma that angering God is unwise, the Christian is tempted—no, compelled to err on the side of his faith even in the face of overwhelming evidence that proves the contrary.
— Michael Vito Tosto, Portrait of an Infidel: The Acerbic Account of How a Passionate Christian Became an Ardent Atheist
You cannot have it both ways. You cannot apply a definitive conclusion to the favorable outcomes of random chance without also applying a definitive conclusion to the unfavorable outcomes of random chance. If you are not fair in both instances, it means you have just committed a variation of what is known as special pleading.
— Michael Vito Tosto, Portrait of an Infidel: The Acerbic Account of How a Passionate Christian Became an Ardent Atheist
They know they dare not have their stuff stripped down to plain words. These Bishops and parsons with their beloved Christianity are like a man who has poisoned his wife and says her body's too sacred for a post-mortem. Nowadays, by the light we have, any ecclesiastic must be born blind or an intellectual rascal. Don't tell me. The world's had this apostolic succession of oily old humbugs from early Egypt onwards, trying to come it over people. Antiquity's no excuse. A sham is no better for being six thousand years stale. Christianity's no more use to us now thanthe Pyramids.
— H.G. Wells, The Holy Terror
If the Bible is accurate in its assertions (a generous statement on our part), then we must also observe that anyone who ultimately comes to God does so because God made it happen. But this seems to imply that God makes it happen for some but doesn’t make it happen for others. Why? Is this fair? Is this good? Is this justice? Is this love?
— Michael Vito Tosto, Portrait of an Infidel: The Acerbic Account of How a Passionate Christian Became an Ardent Atheist
A life based on [religious] faith is a life based on pure speculation, and speculation is, by its very definition, unsound.
— Michael Vito Tosto, Portrait of an Infidel: The Acerbic Account of How a Passionate Christian Became an Ardent Atheist
I just cannot help but feel as though [Christianity] cheapens life. After all, what we must conclude at the end of the day is this disheartening and somewhat debilitating possibility: everything you think, feel, hope for, long for, experience, taste, smell, touch, learn, comprehend, discover, create, work toward, work on, and do, means absolutely nothing to the Christian God if you do not have faith in Jesus.
— Michael Vito Tosto, Portrait of an Infidel: The Acerbic Account of How a Passionate Christian Became an Ardent Atheist
Since one could virtually open the Bible to any page and likely find something that speaks to his particular situation, is it fair to attribute this to the voice of God? After all, the Bible is not the only relevant book in existence. There are other religions with other scriptural texts which could do the same job. In fact, the text need not even be “scriptural.” I could select Sartre’s “Existentialism and Humanism” off the shelf, randomly flip to any page, and likely find something applicable to my life. Does this mean God is speaking through the writings of Jean-Paul Sartre, a man who was by no means considered a friend to Christian thought? If the answer is yes, then who really needs to read the Bible? If this God is capable of turning anything into his “word” at any time, then you could theoretically receive a message from him in your Alpha-Bits.
— Michael Vito Tosto, Portrait of an Infidel: The Acerbic Account of How a Passionate Christian Became an Ardent Atheist
A human being must have an auxiliary means of discovering the truth, a means that exists outside of his own belief or outside any alleged revelation. Otherwise…well, who’s to say he isn’t insane?
— Michael Vito Tosto
But simple as the Sign of the Cross is, it carries a brave weight: it names the Trinity, celebrates the Creator, and brings home all the power of faith to the brush of fingers on skin and bone and belly. So do we, sometimes well and sometimes ill, labor to bring home our belief in God's love to the stuff of our daily lives, the skin and bone of this world — and the Sign of the Cross helps us to remember that we have a Companion on the road.
— Brian  Doyle, Credo: Essays on Grace, Altar Boys, Bees, Kneeling, Saints, the Mass, Priests, Strong Women, Epiphanies, a Wake, and the Haun
Ergo, while the Argument from Design appears to be a nice, neat answer to account for the presence of a multifarious Universe, the truth is that it backfires on itself, shifting the need for an explanation back and back and back…and back…without end, without resolution. This is called an infinite regress, and its presence in the logic of the argument fails to prove the existence of God; if anything, it reveals that the idea of a designer is patently ridiculous, even more so than a godless Cosmos. The argument therefore answers nothing; it merely moves the mystery of origins to an even higher level, demanding that the Creator have his own Creator.
— Michael Vito Tosto, Portrait of an Infidel: The Acerbic Account of How a Passionate Christian Became an Ardent Atheist
While faith may be helpful to the one possessing it, making him feel good and fulfilled and peaceful inside, one thing it is not is responsible. It cannot be. No matter how much you might value your faith, it cannot be responsible. Why not? Faith, by its very nature, is invested with your personal feelings on any given matter.
— Michael Vito Tosto, Portrait of an Infidel: The Acerbic Account of How a Passionate Christian Became an Ardent Atheist
Reason is neutral. It has no biases. It has no agendas. There are no personal interests at stake. Reason simply says, “Here is the data, be responsible with it.” As such, reason is impartial.
— Michael Vito Tosto, Portrait of an Infidel: The Acerbic Account of How a Passionate Christian Became an Ardent Atheist
Christianity voids any significance that would otherwise be attributed to a human life. It reduces all the good things you’ve done and all the bad things you’ve done to, well, nothing. All the good you’ve done won’t matter if you don’t have Jesus. All the bad you’ve done won’t matter if you do have Jesus. In either case, what you do doesn’t matter.
— Michael Vito Tosto, Portrait of an Infidel: The Acerbic Account of How a Passionate Christian Became an Ardent Atheist
It struck me as particularly suspicious that Yahweh was described as being remarkably human. I mean, seriously; this God is, at times, almost too human.
— Michael Vito Tosto, Portrait of an Infidel: The Acerbic Account of How a Passionate Christian Became an Ardent Atheist
Only by having a sense of history's trajectory (even if one does not believe in Parousia) can one love earthly reality and believe—with charity—that there is still room for Hope.
— Umberto Eco, Belief or Nonbelief?
Simple, powerful, poignant, the Sign of the Cross is a mnemonic device like the Mass, in which we sit down to table with one another and remember the Last Supper, or a baptism, where we remember John the Baptist's brawny arm pouring some of the Jordan River over Christ. So we remember the central miracle and paradox of the faith that binds us each to each: that we believe, against all evidence and sense, in life and love and light, in the victory of those things over death and evil and darkness.
— Brian  Doyle, Credo: Essays on Grace, Altar Boys, Bees, Kneeling, Saints, the Mass, Priests, Strong Women, Epiphanies, a Wake, and the Haun
Religion mattered at a deep level, which must help to explain why none of these people went over to Islam; but in most cases it did not direct their lives, nor did it prevent some of them from cultivating their connection with a powerful relative who was a Muslim convert. Whilst the fact that they were Catholics from one of Christendom’s frontier zones may have given them an enhanced sense of their Catholicism, the fact that they were Albanians, connected by language, blood and history to Ottoman subjects and Ottoman territory, gave them an ability to see things also from something more like an Ottoman perspective
— Noel Malcolm, Agents of Empire: Knights, Corsairs, Jesuits and Spies in the Sixteenth-Century Mediterranean World