Quotables - Updated

Carolyn
Oct 11, 2022
9 min read

Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times, history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today. We need to know what kind of firm ground other men, belonging to generations before us, have found to stand on...In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men's reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking. That is why, in times like ours, when old institutions are caving in and being replaced by new institutions not necessarily in accord with most men's preconceived hopes, political thought has to look backwards as well as forwards.

John Dos Passos - "The Use of the Past", The Ground We Stand On, 1941

"When a day passes, it is no longer there. What remains of it? Nothing more than a story. If stories weren't told or books weren't written, man would live like the beasts, only for the day. The whole world, all human life, is one long story." - Isaac Bashevis Singer, Naftali the Storyteller and His Horse, Sus - and Other Stories (1976)

If our identity is in our work, rather than Christ, success will go to our heads, and failure will go to our hearts.

- Tim Keller

"I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love." - the Apostle Paul, Ephesians 4:1b-2

"In recent years I find myself noting how the more relativism becomes the generally accepted way of thinking, the more it tends toward intolerance, thereby becoming a new dogmatism. Political correctness...prescribes itself as the only way to think and speak - if, that is, one wishes to stay in fashion. Being faithful to traditional values and to the knowledge that upholds them is labeled intolerance, and relativism becomes the required norm."- Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Without Roots: The West, Relativism, Christianity, Islam

"An attempt to conduct the affairs of a free government with wisdom and impartiality, and to preserve the just rights of all classes of citizens, without the guidance of Divine precepts, will certainly end in disappointment. God is the supreme moral Governor of the world He has made . . . If men will not submit to be controlled by His laws, He will punish them by the evils resulting from their own disobedience. . . .

In my view, the Christian religion is the most important and one of the first things in which all children, under a free government ought to be instructed. . . . The Christian religion must be the basis of any government intended to secure the rights and privileges of a free people." -Noah Webster (1758-1843)

“Socialism is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy.” - Winston Churchill

"It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong."

-Thomas Sowell

"Have you noticed how much praying for revival has been going on of late - and how little revival has resulted? I believe the problem is that we have been trying to substitute praying for obeying, and it simply will not work."

- A. W. Tozer.

“But the sons of this world have not God; they have only each other, and they walk holding to each other and looking to one another for assurance like frightened children."

- A. W. Tozer.

"Always after a defeat and a respite, the shadow takes another shape and grows again."

"I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.

"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."

-The Fellowship of the Ring, J. R. R. Tolkien

But godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. 1 Timothy, 6:6-7

For now upon this tide,

Men see the world on every side

In sundry wise so divers'd

That it well nigh stands all reversed.

Medieval poet John Gower (1330 - 1408)

[loose translation: "Nowadays, we see so much division and strife, that the world is just about inside-out." CWC]

"It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness."

-The Rev. William L. Watkinson (1838 - 1925), in a sermon entitled, "The Invincible Strategy"

"No words can express how much the world owes to sorrow. Most of the Psalms were born in the wilderness. Most of the Epistles were written in a prison. The greatest thoughts of the greatest thinkers have all passed through fire. The greatest poets have "learned in suffering what they taught in song." In bonds Bunyan lived the allegory that he afterwards wrote, and we may thank Bedford Jail for the Pilgrim's Progress. Take comfort, afflicted Christian! When God is about to make pre-eminent use of a person, He puts them in the fire."

-George MacDonald

"This was a wild new land, and a place where a strong man had to stand for what he believed. One could not yield to the lawless and the ruthless, or soon, there would be no freedom"

-Louis L'Amour, The Mountain Valley War

People get ready

There's a train a-coming

You don't need no baggage

You just get on board

All you need is faith

To hear the diesels humming

Don't need no ticket

You just thank the Lord.

-from People Get Ready, performed by The Impressions in 1965, written by Curtis Mayfield

"I have been driven many times upon my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go. My own wisdom, and that of all about me, seemed insufficient for that day."

-President Abraham Lincoln, after the Battle of Bull Run in 1862

"If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these organizers are always good? Do not the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race?"

-Frédéric Bastiat (1801 - 1850), French writer, statesman, and economist

"Today's academic charlatanism consists in part in mistaking rhetoric for knowledge and words for things. This sleight of hand is particularly prevalent in matters relating to race. Seeing specters of racism everywhere, the racial avengers are tearing down every institution of Western Civilization, simply because of its 'whiteness'. Science has stood as a guard against such metaphorical, magical thinking. Bit by bit, it [science] is succumbing."

-Author Heather MacDonald

"If you think yourself to be abandoned by God, the hope is not in reasoning that God is aware of all things and is therefore aware of you. That is true, but not always helpful. The hope is knowing that God will act again! And in the meantime, your job is to go on in faithful obedience to what He has already shown you...however long ago that may have been...It is God's nature to remember. He is faithful."

-Dr. James Montgomery Boice, The Bible Study Hour

“The answer is to go deeper than race, deeper than wealth, deeper than ethnic identity, deeper than gender. To teach ourselves to comprehend each person, not as a symbol of a group, but as a unique and special individual within a common context of shared humanity. To go to that fundamental place where we are all simply mortal creatures, seeking to create order, beauty, family, and connection to the world that — on its own — seems to bend too often towards randomness and entropy.”

-Dr. Wyatt Tee Walker, a contemporary and close advisor to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., 2015

"Hear me clearly: America is not a racist country. It's backwards to fight discrimination with different types of discrimination. And it's wrong to try to use our painful past to dishonestly shut down debates in the present."

-Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), April 2021

If you gave people the chance to "work out" their morality, then they would work out the version which was easiest for them, and which allowed them to do what suited them for as much of the time as possible. That, in Mma. Ramotswe's view, was simple selfishness, whatever grand name one gave to it.

- Alexander McCall Smith, Morality for Beautiful Girls (book #2 in the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series)

Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you - Nathaniel Hawthorne

"It's just getting harder to disseminate the truth. It's almost like, now we should turn the whole thing off. Go back to newsprint, go back to word of mouth, and start to read books again. It's becoming so absurd now with AI, all the tricks it can do, and the woke generation. It's terrifying, the miserable world they're going to create for themselves. I mean, anyone who's lived a life and you see what they're doing, you just know that it's a route to nowhere." - Roger Daltry, lead singer of "The Who" (May 2021)

"A movement driven by fury and resentment will not change any of our lives for the better. Ce n'est pas possible. It is corrupt at the source."

- Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot, in The Monogram Murders by Sophie Hannah

“A person's a person, no matter how small.”― Dr. Seuss, Horton Hears a Who!

"A good scare is worth more than good advice." - Horace (65 BC - 8 BC)

"It seems to me a man comes into this world with a little ready raw material - himself. His folks can only give him a sort of push, and a mite of teaching, but in the long run, what a man becomes is his own problem."

-Louis L'Amour, Chancy

She didn't carry a grudge. They were far too heavy and she had too far to go. - Louise Penny

And can it be, that I should gain

An interest in the Saviour’s blood?

Died he for me, who caused his pain?

For me, who him to death pursued?

Amazing love! how can it be

That thou, my God, shouldst die for me?

-Charles Wesley (1701-1778) Church of England: Hymns, 201

"You ask me what I think of Christ? He is the chiefest among ten thousand, and altogether lovely—my Lord, my Savior, and my God.

What do I think of the Bible? It is the infallible Word of God, a light erected all along the shores of time to warn against the rocks and breakers, and to show the only way to the harbor of eternal rest."

- William Strong, associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1870 - 1880 (quoted in The Patriot's Daily Devotional)

If the Lord does not build the house, the work of the builders is useless; if the Lord does not protect the city, it does no good for the sentries to stand guard. It is useless to work so hard for a living, getting up early and going to bed late. For the Lord provides for those He loves, while they are asleep. Psalm 127:1-2

"Individual responsibility is a corollary to freedom. We can have both." - Texas Gov. Greg Abbot on his executive order to open his state 100 percent and lift the mask mandate. (March 2021)

"...she had long accepted the fact that happiness is like swallows in Spring. It may come and nest under your eaves or it may not. You cannot command it. When you expect to be happy you are not; when you don't expect to be happy there's suddenly Easter in your soul, though it be midwinter." - Elizabeth Goudge, The White Witch

"Do not look forward to what may happen tomorrow; the same everlasting Father who cares for you today will take care of you tomorrow and every other day. Either He will shield you from suffering, or He will give you unfailing strength to bear it. Be at peace, then; put aside all anxious thoughts and imaginations, and say continually: 'The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart has trusted in Him and I am helped. He is not only with me but in me and I in Him.'" - St. Francis de Sales (1567 - 1622)

"A scared world needs a fearless church." - A.W. Tozer

"The hands of the Almighty are so often to be found at the ends of our own arms." Sister Monica Joan on Call the Midwife, S6:E9

"Our faith must be taken to its limits so its limits can expand." - Jan Karon, At Home in Mitford

"Whenever I find myself in the cellar of affliction, I always look about for the wine." - Samuel Rutherford

"Our joy must not depend on an earthly outcome, but it must depend on the eternal outcome - we must never condition our joy through the lens of the temporal." - Ken Boa, Reflections Newsletter 9/2020

"'Some people believe the law to be a restriction. It is a restriction only against evil. Laws are made to free people, not to bind them - if they are the proper laws. They tell each of us what he may do without transgressing on the equal liberty of any other man.'" - Louis L'Amour, Borden Chantry

"They called them crazy when they started out

Said seventeen's too young to know what loves about

They've been together fifty-eight years now

That's crazy...

Just ask him how he did it; he'll say pull up a seat

It'll only take a minute, to tell you everything

Be a best friend, tell the truth, and over use I Love You

Go to work, do your best, don't outsmart your common sense

Never let your prayin' knees get lazy

And love like crazy"

From the song, Love Like Crazy, performed by Lee Brice (2009), written by Tim James and Doug Johnson

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