Category Archives: Quotes

Stuff I’ve read and want to remember.

Gifts

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I might do another post someday about gifts, but for now I’ll say that my favorite kind to give or receive is the kind that “fits.” Something that the recipient can use or enjoy.Some gifts, I’ve noticed, are just given because it’s the way the giver expresses s/he values the recipient (I’m thinking here of the sometimes-useless wedding gifts every couple must decide what to do with).

There is a quote (in a slightly different context) in the book I read for Sunday school some months back. It was said to be an old Chinese proverb:

“Nothing can atone for the insult of a gift except for the love of the person who gives it.”

The author’s point is that the gift represents a need of the recipient, and insults by implying he or she can’t meet that need alone.

Especially in terms of the weird/useless gift category this proverb means something else to me: The love of the giver adds value to a gift that otherwise has none. Picture the wilting bundle of dandelions, their hollow stems half-crushed by excited little hands, being put in a vase on the table. Its whole value comes from

“the love of the person who gives it.”

Quote Round-up

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I still find each day too short for all the thoughts I want to think, all the walks I want to take, all the books I want to read, and all the friends I want to see.

–John Burroughs

Perfect love, we know, casteth out fear. But so do several other things– ignorance, alcohol, passion, presumption and stupidity.
~
It is quite useless knocking at the door of heaven for earthly comfort; it’s not the sort of comfort they supply there.

–C.S. Lewis

How great the illusion that beauty is goodness

Added 1/21

A person who publishes a book willfully appears before the populace with his pants down… If it is a good book nothing can hurt him. If it is a bad book, nothing can help him.

–Edna St. Vincent Millay

Added 1/29

It’s not that I believe in miracles – I depend on them.

–Anne Lamott

Added 2/23

The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.

G.K. Chesterton

Dog quotes

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This was not researched, and I don’t know most of the people credited with the lines, but I enjoyed them.

I wonder if other dogs think poodles are members of a weird religious cult.
–Rita Rudner

A dog teaches a boy fidelity, perseverance, and to turn around three times before lying down.
–Robert Benchley

Anybody who doesn’t know what soap tastes like never washed a dog
–Franklin P. Jones

If your dog is fat, you aren’t getting enough exercise.
— Unknown

Ever consider what our dogs must think of us? I mean, here we come back from a grocery store with the most amazing haul — chicken, pork, half a cow. They must think we’re the greatest hunters on earth!
— Anne Tyler

You can say any foolish thing to a dog, and the dog will give you a look that says, ‘Wow, you’re right! I never would’ve thought of that!’
— Dave Barry

And when I saw these two I thought, hmm, maybe this is it.

Dogs are not our whole life, but they make our lives whole.
— Roger Caras

We give dogs time we can spare, space we can spare and love we can spare. And in return, dogs give us their all. It’s the best deal man has ever made.
— M. Acklam

The first sounds a little sacrilegious, but dogs make our lives whole the way children do: they add a richness and variety of experience the uninitiated may never understand.

And the later articulates perfectly my point of awe about dogs. At least the ones I consider good dogs. No matter where they fit your life, they’re thankful to fit. They’re happy to be along for the ride and are endlessly positive about the adventure.

I once stopped going to a Mom’s group largely because it was too negative. I am really hooked on positivity.

Grace for All Things

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Today’s epiphany, courtesy Hudson Taylor (via Adventures in Autism):

…In the easiest position He must give me His grace, and in the most difficult, His grace is sufficient.

I don’t remember particularly questioning God’s sufficiency in difficulty; my faulty thinking was more about assuming I could reach a level of competency that would leave me grateful for– but somehow less completely dependant on– God’s provision of grace for the smaller roles.

Taylor goes on with more encouraging reminders about sufficiency.
The illustration:

It matters little to my servant whether I send him to buy a few cash worth of things, or the most expensive articles. In either case he looks to me for the money and brings me his purchases.

What a lovely picture of dependency and trust.

So, if God should place me in serious perplexity, must He not meet much guidance; in positions of great difficulty, much grace; in circumstances of great pressure and trial, much strength? No fear that His resources will prove unequal to the emergency! And His resources are mine, for He is mine, and is with me and dwells in me.

Such a great and precious promise from our faithful God and Father:

2 Corinthians 12:9
But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”

Not Worth the Effort

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From A.W. Tozer’s book The Pursuit of God.

The heart’s fierce desire to protect itself from every slight, to shield its touchy honor from the bad opinion of friend and enemy, will never let the mind have rest. Continue this fight through the years and the burden will become intolerable.

Such a burden is not necessary to bear. Jesus calls us to rest, and meekness is His method. The meek man cares not at all who is greater than he, for he has long ago decided that the esteem of the world is not worth the effort.

How to Become a Saint While Changing Diapers

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You gotta love that title. It’s another chapter title from The Angel and the Ants (here if you want to browse the other excerpts).

Reading this chapter I felt again that twinge I get when wishing my life now showed the fruits of a more structured childhood (not that I’d want to have lived that childhood, necessarily, but it would be nice to have had all that learning and training behind me). Both musicians (Suzuki-type) and traditional Catholics are (I imagine) simply stuffed full of information at an age where there are fewer distractions to prevent its taking root.

The reason I think of this now, is that Kreeft sites several fine distinctions on the “do all as unto the Lord” idea, from broader reading than I would have found without him, and applies it to this idea of “living a life of sanctity” emphasized in his book.

“Seeds,” he calls them, and they are drawn from that sea of tradition and reading available for those brave enough to wade in:

  • From The Devine Milieu Kreeft shares the suggestion that “Not only our operatio but also our opus, not only our acts of working, but also the works we produce will somehow be used by God … We are to be doing the very best work we can because that work is to be part of God’s eternal kingdom, unimaginably transformed by death and resurrection. We are cooperating with God right now in building this new world; our pen, or shovel, or computer, is the extension of the fingers of Christ, the body of Christ.”
  • Summarizing Opus Dei, Kreeft says, its “whole reason for existence is to address the problem of the sanctification of daily work directly and explicitly. Its fundamental answer is traditional: to offer up our work to God, to pour the infinitely precious soul of a pure intention, a Godward intention, into every secular action.”
  • Kreeft observes that Vatican II encouraged Catholics to “study and profit from the wisdom in other world religions.” Here is an example he takes from the Bhagavad-Gita, a Hindu book (Kreeft’s words):
    • “The way to sanctity amidst activity is to work not for the fruit of the work, not out of desire for success, not looking forward, but looking backwards, so to speak, to the source and motive of the act: love and duty and obedience to God. Do what you do because it is your God-given task now. If you act out of desire for success, you bind yourself to the fear of failure. If we will only one thing– God’s will– we are free.” (emphasis mine)
  • Finally, a quote from Mother Theresa: “God did not put me here to be successful. God put me here to be faithful.”

Depending on the mood or state-of-mind I am in, any of these ideas may be the one that strikes home, and causes me to reassess my attitude and approach to my current work(s). Along with the Lewis quote I mentioned earlier, these are things I want to keep in mind.

Remembering

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From C.S. Lewis:

“The great thing, if one can, is to stop regarding all the unpleasant things as interruptions of one’s “own” or real life. The truth is of course that what one calls the interruptions are precisely one’s real life– the life God is sending one, day by day.”

Thought and poem of the day

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Totally like whatever, you know?
By Taylor Mali
www.taylormali.com

In case you hadn’t noticed,
it has somehow become uncool
to sound like you know what you’re talking about?
Or believe strongly in what you’re saying?
Invisible question marks and parenthetical (you know?)’s
have been attaching themselves to the ends of our sentences?
Even when those sentences aren’t, like, questions? You know?

Declarative sentences – so-called
because they used to, like, DECLARE things to be true
as opposed to other things which were, like, not –
have been infected by a totally hip
and tragically cool interrogative tone? You know?
Like, don’t think I’m uncool just because I’ve noticed this;
this is just like the word on the street, you know?
It’s like what I’ve heard?
I have nothing personally invested in my own opinions, okay?
I’m just inviting you to join me in my uncertainty?

What has happened to our conviction?
Where are the limbs out on which we once walked?
Have they been, like, chopped down
with the rest of the rain forest?
Or do we have, like, nothing to say?
Has society become so, like, totally . . .
I mean absolutely . . . You know?
That we’ve just gotten to the point where it’s just, like . . .
whatever!

And so actually our disarticulation . . . ness
is just a clever sort of . . . thing
to disguise the fact that we’ve become
the most aggressively inarticulate generation
to come along since . . .
you know, a long, long time ago!

I entreat you, I implore you, I exhort you,
I challenge you: To speak with conviction.
To say what you believe in a manner that bespeaks
the determination with which you believe it.
Because contrary to the wisdom of the bumper sticker,
it is not enough these days to simply QUESTION AUTHORITY.
You have to speak with it, too.

(Reprinted with blanket permission)

“Imaginary” good and evil

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From Phillip Yancy: (though most of it isn’t his, I got it from his article).

Simone Weil said imaginary evil, such as that portrayed in books, television shows, and movies, “is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.”

This, I have learned, is one of the hardest things about writing (and reading too). It falls into the same category as a discussion I heard/read somewhere about how much easier it is to maintain your image if you are an “evil” leader, than if you are a “good” leader.

The argument goes: For the former, everything you do reinforces your image– who you are (Even the “good” you may choose to do sets your people on edge, because everybody’s wondering what’s really going on, or when the other shoe will drop.); while, for the latter, no matter what you do, someone will be unhappy, and you will lose your reputation of “goodness.”

Most people today call Jesus a “good teacher” (if nothing more), and leave it at that (“How can anyone have a problem with a man going around telling everyone to love each other?”). But, other writers have pointed out, most people in Jesus’s day had very strong feelings about him. And not all of those positive.

~~~

Getting back to the original quote, I’ve always wondered how best to make Good and Right as complex and alive as all the bad that must inevitably be in a good story.

I think it was my husband that pointed out one element of this difficulty: Everyone has encountered evil. Many of them intense evil. Far fewer have noticed a good on that scale.

I’m not saying it isn’t there (though I can think of several cases where even I, on the outside, can’t see it), but good does not usually impress itself so unignorably on the individual as evil does.

The Blogger’s creed?

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I’ve seen this written or referred to on four or five different blogs, so I’ll just credit the original writer. (Okay, also as cited by JollyBlogger.)

I am the sort of man who writes because he has made progress, and who makes progress by writing.
— Augustine, Epistle 143.2-3

I cannot say that I am any sort of man. But for me, part of progress is processing, and processing is done by writing, so it’s kinds of the same thing.