There are great seasons when persons with limited powers are justified in exceeding them, and a person would be contemptible not to risk it.
—Edmund Randolph, Governor of Virginia, quoted in Catherine Drinker Bowen, Miracle at Philadelphia.
In this World
I, in my time, was a soldier of this world, and understand many things. I know that regret and remembrance, no matter how far a man flees drag like dogs after him, and howl in the night-time. They give him no chance to sleep by their howling. What then shall he do?
—On the Field of Glory, Henryk Sienkiewicz, tr. Jeremiah Curtin, p132.
—On the Field of Glory, Henryk Sienkiewicz, tr. Jeremiah Curtin, p132.
University Spokesman
If a man walking after wind and falsehood
Had told lies and said,
'I will speak out to you concerning wine and liquor,'
He would be spokesman to this people.
—Micah 2:11
Had told lies and said,
'I will speak out to you concerning wine and liquor,'
He would be spokesman to this people.
—Micah 2:11
On Stories in Film
The maker of the film version, however, apparently thought this tame. He substituted a subterranean volcanic eruption, and then went one better by adding an earthquake. Perhaps we should not blame him. Perhaps the original was not 'cinematic'.... But it would have been better not to have chosen in the first place a story which could be adapted to the screen only by being ruined.... There must be a pleasure in such stories distinct from mere excitement.
—C.S. Lewis, On seeing a film version of King Solomon's Mines
Nothing is more disastrous than the view that the cinema can and should replace popular written fiction. The elements which it excludes are precisely those which give the untrained mind its only access to the imaginative world. There is death in the camera.
—C.S. Lewis, Of Other Worlds: On Stories p17.
—C.S. Lewis, On seeing a film version of King Solomon's Mines
Nothing is more disastrous than the view that the cinema can and should replace popular written fiction. The elements which it excludes are precisely those which give the untrained mind its only access to the imaginative world. There is death in the camera.
—C.S. Lewis, Of Other Worlds: On Stories p17.
On Stories
"In life and art both, as it seems to me, we are always trying to catch in our net of successive moments something that is not successive. Whether in real life there is any doctor who can teach us how to do it, so that at last either the meshes will become fine enough to hold the bird, or we be so changed that we can throw our nets away and follow the bird to its own country," I cannot say. But I think it is sometimes done in stories.
—C.S. Lewis, Of Other Worlds: Fairy Stories p20.
—C.S. Lewis, Of Other Worlds: Fairy Stories p20.
Little to be Said
Of bliss and glad life there is little to be said, before it ends; as works fair and wonderful, while still they endure for eyes to see, are their own record, and only when they are in peril or broken for ever do they pass into song.
—J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion, Of the Sindar.
—J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion, Of the Sindar.
Loneliness
Now it is Loneliness who comes at night
Instead of Sleep, to sit beside my bed.
Like a tired child I lie and wait her tread,
I watch her softly blowing out the light.
Motionless sitting, neither left or right
She turns, and weary, weary droops her head.
She, too, is old; she, too, has fought the fight.
So, with the laurel she is garlanded.
Through the sad dark the slowly ebbing tide
Breaks on a barren shore, unsatisfied.
A strange wind flows... then silence. I am fain
To turn to Loneliness, to take her hand,
Cling to her, waiting, till the barren land
Fills with the dreadful monotone of rain.
—Katherine Mansfield, Loneliness.
Instead of Sleep, to sit beside my bed.
Like a tired child I lie and wait her tread,
I watch her softly blowing out the light.
Motionless sitting, neither left or right
She turns, and weary, weary droops her head.
She, too, is old; she, too, has fought the fight.
So, with the laurel she is garlanded.
Through the sad dark the slowly ebbing tide
Breaks on a barren shore, unsatisfied.
A strange wind flows... then silence. I am fain
To turn to Loneliness, to take her hand,
Cling to her, waiting, till the barren land
Fills with the dreadful monotone of rain.
—Katherine Mansfield, Loneliness.
Engineering Ethics
Contemporary duty ethicists recognize that many moral dilemmas are resolvable only by recognizing some valid exceptions to simple principles of duty.
—Introduction to Engineering Ethics p 54.
We are all trying to let our mind and heart go their own way—centered on money or pleasure or ambition—and hoping, in spite of this, to behave honestly and chastely and humbly.
—C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity.
—Introduction to Engineering Ethics p 54.
We are all trying to let our mind and heart go their own way—centered on money or pleasure or ambition—and hoping, in spite of this, to behave honestly and chastely and humbly.
—C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity.
What is important?
One never forgets what is important. I learned that only later, when I was somewhat older. Nothing secondary remains—it gets thrown away along with one's dreams.
—Sándor Márai, Embers (trans. Carol Brown Janeway).
—Sándor Márai, Embers (trans. Carol Brown Janeway).
I wish you'd stop quoting!
"Mrs. Who, I wish you'd stop quoting!" Charles Wallace sounded very annoyed.
"But she finds it so difficult to verbalize, Charles dear. It helps her if she can quote instead of working out words of her own."
—Madeline L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time p28.
"But she finds it so difficult to verbalize, Charles dear. It helps her if she can quote instead of working out words of her own."
—Madeline L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time p28.
The Tempest
Me, poor man!—my library was dukedom large enough.
—Prospero, in William Shakespeare's The Tempest, Act I Scene II.
—Prospero, in William Shakespeare's The Tempest, Act I Scene II.
Calvin's Institutes I
Shall we, indeed, distinguish between right and wrong by that judgment which has been imparted to us, yet will there be no judge in heaven? Will there remain for us even in sleep some remnant of intelligence, yet will no God keep watch in governing the world? Shall we think ourselves the inventors of so many arts and useful things that God may be defrauded of his praise?
—John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion I. v. 5.
—John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion I. v. 5.
If a prophet is deceived
If the prophet is deceived and speaks a word, I, the LORD, have deceived that prophet, and I will stretch out my hand against him and will destroy him from the midst of my people Israel.
—Ezekiel 14:9 ESV, quoted in John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion, I. xviii. 2.
If a calamity occurs in a city has not the Lord done it?
—Amos 3:6 NASB.
—Ezekiel 14:9 ESV, quoted in John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion, I. xviii. 2.
If a calamity occurs in a city has not the Lord done it?
—Amos 3:6 NASB.
George MacDonald
From Eden's bowers the full-fed rivers flow,
To guide the outcasts to the land of woe:
Our Earth one little toiling streamlet yields,
To guild the wanderers to the happy fields.
—George MacDonald, epigraph to Phantastes ch X.
From dreams of bliss shall men awake
One day, but not to weep:
The dreams remain; they only break
The mirror of the sleep.
—George MacDonald, epigraph to Phantastes ch XVIII, adapted from Jean Paul's Hesperus:
Ja es wird zwar ein anderes Zeitalter kommen, woes Licht wird, und wo der Mensch aus erhabnen Traümen erwacht, und die Traüme—wieder findet weil er nichts verlor als den Schlaf.
To guide the outcasts to the land of woe:
Our Earth one little toiling streamlet yields,
To guild the wanderers to the happy fields.
—George MacDonald, epigraph to Phantastes ch X.
From dreams of bliss shall men awake
One day, but not to weep:
The dreams remain; they only break
The mirror of the sleep.
—George MacDonald, epigraph to Phantastes ch XVIII, adapted from Jean Paul's Hesperus:
Ja es wird zwar ein anderes Zeitalter kommen, woes Licht wird, und wo der Mensch aus erhabnen Traümen erwacht, und die Traüme—wieder findet weil er nichts verlor als den Schlaf.
Adelaide
Alas, how easily things go wrong!
A sigh too much, or a kiss too long,
And there follows a mist and a weeping rain,
And life is never the same again.
Alas, how hardly things go right!
'Tis hard to watch in a summer night,
For the sigh will come, and the kiss will stay,
And the summer night is a wintry day.
— George MacDonald, Phantastes ch XIX.
And yet how easily things go right,
If the sigh and a kiss of a summer's night
Come deep from the soul in the stronger ray
That is born in the light of the winter's day.
And things can never go badly wrong
If the heart be true and the love be strong,
For the mist, if it comes, and the weeping rain
Will be changed by the love into sunshine again.
— Lorettus S. Metcalf, The Forum
A sigh too much, or a kiss too long,
And there follows a mist and a weeping rain,
And life is never the same again.
Alas, how hardly things go right!
'Tis hard to watch in a summer night,
For the sigh will come, and the kiss will stay,
And the summer night is a wintry day.
— George MacDonald, Phantastes ch XIX.
And yet how easily things go right,
If the sigh and a kiss of a summer's night
Come deep from the soul in the stronger ray
That is born in the light of the winter's day.
And things can never go badly wrong
If the heart be true and the love be strong,
For the mist, if it comes, and the weeping rain
Will be changed by the love into sunshine again.
— Lorettus S. Metcalf, The Forum
Tolkien's comments on the film treatment of The Lord of the Rings
The script writers may be irritated or aggrieved by the tone of many of my criticisms. If so, I am sorry (though not surprised). But I would ask them to make an effort of imagination sufficient to understand the irritation (and on occasion the resentment) of an author, who finds, increasingly as he proceeds, his work treated as it would seem carelessly in general, in places recklessly, and with no evident signs of any appreciation of what it is all about. He has cut the parts of the story upon which its characteristic and peculiar tone principally depends, showing a preference for fights; and he has made no serious attempt to represent the heart of the tale adequately: the journey of the Ringbearers. The last and most important part of this has, and it is not too strong a word, simply been murdered.... Why has my account been entirely rewritten here, with regard for the rest of the tale? I have spent some time on this passage, as an example of what I find too frequent to give me 'pleasure or satisfaction': deliberate alteration of the story, in fact and significance, with out any practical or artistic object (that I can see).... Part III is totally unacceptable to me, as a whole and in detail. All I can say is: The Lord of the Rings can not be garbled like that.
—The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, 210: From a letter to Forrest J. Ackerman, p 270.
—The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, 210: From a letter to Forrest J. Ackerman, p 270.
The Letters of J.R.R Tolkien
From a letter to Michael Tolkien (age 20), 6-8 March 1941
I put before you the one great thing to love on earth: the Blessed Sacrament. [...] There you will find romance, glory, honour, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves upon earth, and more than that: Death: by the divine paradox, that which ends life, and demands the surrender of all, and yet by the taste (or foretaste) of which alone can what you seek in your earthly relationships (love, faithfulness, joy) be maintained, or take on that complexion of reality, of eternal endurance, which every man's heart desires.
—The Letters of J.R.R Tolkien, No. 43.
I put before you the one great thing to love on earth: the Blessed Sacrament. [...] There you will find romance, glory, honour, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves upon earth, and more than that: Death: by the divine paradox, that which ends life, and demands the surrender of all, and yet by the taste (or foretaste) of which alone can what you seek in your earthly relationships (love, faithfulness, joy) be maintained, or take on that complexion of reality, of eternal endurance, which every man's heart desires.
—The Letters of J.R.R Tolkien, No. 43.
Good Work and Good Works
The main practical task for most of us is not to give the Big Men advice about how to end our fatal economy—we have none to give and they wouldn't listen—but to consider how we can live within it as little hurt and degraded as possible.
—C.S. Lewis, Good Work and Good Works, in The World's Last Night and Other Essays, p 77.
—C.S. Lewis, Good Work and Good Works, in The World's Last Night and Other Essays, p 77.
Ronald Reagan
The federal government is like a baby's alimentary canal, with a voracious appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.
—Ronald Reagan
—Ronald Reagan
J.R.R. Tolkien
Pippin glanced in some wonder at the face now close beside his own, for the sound of that laugh had been gay and merry. Yet in the wizard's face he saw at first only lines of care and sorrow; though as he looked more intently he perceived that under all there was a great joy: a fountain of mirth enough to set a kingdom laughing, were it to gush forth.
—J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, Book V, ch 1.
—J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, Book V, ch 1.
The World
The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.
—J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, Book II ch 6.
—J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, Book II ch 6.
A Christian Home
Priestess, wife, and mother, there she minister[ed] daily in holy works of household peace, and by faith and prayer and love redeem[ed] from grossness and earthliness the common toils and wants of life;... and whether she washed or ironed, or moulded biscuit or conserved plums, her gentle beauty seemed to turn to poetry all the prose of life.
—Harriet Beecher Stowe, The Minister's Wooing, ps 326, 15.
—Harriet Beecher Stowe, The Minister's Wooing, ps 326, 15.
Men and Women
Spite of all the treatises that have lately appeared, to demonstrate that there are no particular inherent diversities between men and women, we hold to the opinion that one thorough season of house-cleaning is sufficient to probe the existence of awful and mysterious difference between the sexes, and of subtile and reserved forces in the female line, before which the lords of creation can only veil their faces with a discreet reverence.
—Harriet Beecher Stowe, The Minister's Wooing ©1859, p 284.
—Harriet Beecher Stowe, The Minister's Wooing ©1859, p 284.
The Great Poet of Life
Every impulse of beauty, of heroism, and every craving for purer love, fairer perfection, nobler type and style of being that that which closes like a prison-house around us, in the dim, daily walk of life, is God's breath, God's impulse, God's reminder to the soul that there is something higher, sweeter, purer, yet to be attained.
—Harriet Beecher Stowe, The Minister's Wooing, p 72.
—Harriet Beecher Stowe, The Minister's Wooing, p 72.
The Minister's Wooing
He contemplated the entrance on married life somewhat in this wise:—That at a time and place suiting, he should look out unto himself a woman of a pleasant countenance and of good repute, a zealous, earnest Christian, and well skilled in the items of household management, whom, accosting as a stranger and pilgrim to a better life, he should loyally and lovingly entreat, as Isaac did Rebekah, to come under the shadow of his tent and be a helpmeet unto him in what yet remained of this mortal journey.
—Harriet Beecher Stowe, The Minister's Wooing, p 52.
—Harriet Beecher Stowe, The Minister's Wooing, p 52.
The Heart-Fountain
So we go,—so little knowing what we touch and what touches us as we talk! We drop out a common piece of news,... and lo, on our right hand or our left, some heart has sunk under the news silently,—gone down in the great ocean of Fate, without even a bubble rising to tell its drowning pang. An this—God help us!—is what we call living!
—Harriet Beecher Stowe, The Minister's Wooing, p 41.
—Harriet Beecher Stowe, The Minister's Wooing, p 41.
In Less Sophisticated Days
In those times, people held to the singular opinion that the night was made to sleep in; they inferred it from a general confidence they had in the wisdom of Mother Nature, supposing that she did not put out her lights and draw her bed-curtains and hush all the noise in her great world-house without strongly intending that her children should go to sleep; and the consequence was, that very soon after sunset the whole community very generally set their faces bedward, and the tolling of the nine-o'clock evening-bell had an awful solemnity in it, announcing the end of all respectable proceedings in life for that day.
—Harriet Beecher Stowe, The Minister's Wooing, p 11.
—Harriet Beecher Stowe, The Minister's Wooing, p 11.
Jim Elliot
He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.
—Jim Elliot, The Journals of Jim Elliot p. 17.
Exams
Sometimes I feel as if those exams meant everything, but when I look at the big buds swelling on those chestnut trees and the misty blue air at the end of the streets they don't seem half so important.
—L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables, p 397.
—L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables, p 397.
Bilbo's Last Song
Day is ended, dim my eyes,
but journey long before me lies.
Farewell, friends! I hear the call.
The ship's beside the stony wall.
Foam is white and waves are grey;
beyond the sunset leads my way.
Foam is salt, the wind is free;
I hear the rising of the Sea.
Farewell, friends! The sails are set,
the wind is east, the moorings fret.
Shadows long before me lie,
beneath the ever-bending sky,
but islands lie behind the Sun
that I shall raise ere all is done;
lands there are to west of West,
where night is quiet and sleep is rest.
Guided by the Lonely Star,
beyond the utmost harbour-bar,
I'll find the heavens fair and free,
and beaches of the Starlit Sea.
Ship, my ship! I seek the West,
and fields and mountains ever blest.
Farewell to Middle-earth at last.
I see the Star above my mast!
—J.R.R. Tolkien, Bilbo's Last Song (artwork by Tolkien).
1 Corinthians 14:20
Brothers, do not be children in your thinking. Be infants in evil, but in your thinking be mature.
—1 Corinthians 14:20, quoted in Alex and Brett Harris, Do Hard Things, p 43.
—1 Corinthians 14:20, quoted in Alex and Brett Harris, Do Hard Things, p 43.
A Tale of Two Cities
The new era began; the king was tried, doomed, and beheaded; the Republic of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death, declared for victory or death against the world in arms; the black flag waved night and day from the great towers of Notre Dame; three hundred thousand men, summoned to rise against the tyrants of the earth, rose from all the varying soils of France, as if the dragon's teeth had been sown broadcast, and had yielded fruit equally on hill and plain.... What private solicitude could rear itself against the deluge of the Year One of Liberty—the deluge rising from below, not falling from above, and with the windows of Heaven shut, not opened!
There was no pause, no pity, no peace, no interval of relenting rest, no measurement of time. Though days and nights circled as regularly as when time was young, and the evening and morning were the first day, other count of time there was none. Hold of it was lost in the raging fever of a nation, as it is in the fever of one patient.... And yet, observing the strange law of contradiction which obtains in all such cases, the time was long, while it flamed by so fast.... Above all, one hideous figure grew as familiar as if it had been before the general gaze from the foundations of the world—the figure of the sharp female called La Guillotine.
It was the popular theme for jests.... It was the sign of the regeneration of the human race. It superseded the Cross. Models of it were worn on breasts from which the Cross was discarded, and it was bowed down to and believed in where the Cross was denied. It sheared off heads so many, that it, and the ground it most polluted, were a rotten red.... The name of the strong man of Old Scripture had descended to the chief functionary who worked it; but, so armed, he was stronger than his namesake, and blinder, and tore away the gates of God's own Temple every day.
—Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities, Book 3 Chapter 4 page 259.
There was no pause, no pity, no peace, no interval of relenting rest, no measurement of time. Though days and nights circled as regularly as when time was young, and the evening and morning were the first day, other count of time there was none. Hold of it was lost in the raging fever of a nation, as it is in the fever of one patient.... And yet, observing the strange law of contradiction which obtains in all such cases, the time was long, while it flamed by so fast.... Above all, one hideous figure grew as familiar as if it had been before the general gaze from the foundations of the world—the figure of the sharp female called La Guillotine.
It was the popular theme for jests.... It was the sign of the regeneration of the human race. It superseded the Cross. Models of it were worn on breasts from which the Cross was discarded, and it was bowed down to and believed in where the Cross was denied. It sheared off heads so many, that it, and the ground it most polluted, were a rotten red.... The name of the strong man of Old Scripture had descended to the chief functionary who worked it; but, so armed, he was stronger than his namesake, and blinder, and tore away the gates of God's own Temple every day.
—Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities, Book 3 Chapter 4 page 259.
University Discipline
He awakens me morning by morning,
He awakens my ear to listen as a disciple.
—Isaiah 50:4 NASB
He awakens my ear to listen as a disciple.
—Isaiah 50:4 NASB
Man the Sub-Creator
Man, sub-creator, the refracted light
through whom is splintered from a single White
to many hues, and endlessly combined
in living shapes that move from mind to mind.
Though all the crannies of the world we filled
with Elves and Goblins, though we dared to build
gods and their houses out of dark and light,
and sowed the seed of dragons, 'twas our right
(used or misused). The right has not decayed.
We make still by the law in which we're made.
—from J.R.R. Tolkien, Mythopoeia, The Tolkien Reader p74, quoted in Bruner and Ware, Finding God in the Lord of the Rings, p111.
through whom is splintered from a single White
to many hues, and endlessly combined
in living shapes that move from mind to mind.
Though all the crannies of the world we filled
with Elves and Goblins, though we dared to build
gods and their houses out of dark and light,
and sowed the seed of dragons, 'twas our right
(used or misused). The right has not decayed.
We make still by the law in which we're made.
—from J.R.R. Tolkien, Mythopoeia, The Tolkien Reader p74, quoted in Bruner and Ware, Finding God in the Lord of the Rings, p111.
Malcolm Muggeridge
Let us then as Christians rejoice that we see around us on every hand the decay of the institutions and the instruments of power, see intimations of empires falling to pieces, money in total disarray, dictators and parliamentarians alike nonplussed by the confusion and conflicts which encompass them. For it is precisely when every earthly hope has been explored and found wanting, when every possibility of help from earthly sources has been sought and is not forthcoming, when every recourse this world offers, moral as well as material, has been explored to no effect, when in the shivering cold the last faggot has been thrown on the fire and in the gathering darkness every glimmer of light has finally flickered out, it's then that Christ's hand reaches out sure and firm. Then Christ's words bring their inexpressible comfort, then his light shines brightest, abolishing the darkness forever. So, finding in everything only deception and nothingness, the soul is constrained to have recourse to God Himself and to rest content with Him.
—Malcolm Muggeridge, The End of Christendom ©1980, p56, quoted in Bruner and Ware, Finding God in the Lord of the Rings, p75.
—Malcolm Muggeridge, The End of Christendom ©1980, p56, quoted in Bruner and Ware, Finding God in the Lord of the Rings, p75.
Found in an abandoned house in NO, LA 3/5/09.
4/19/03
"Praise the Lord"
Hi Baby Girl
Well first of all I give thank's to the Father God and his Son Jesus our Lord and saviour.
Kisha I prayed that I will here from you, but the year's passed and I been asking my Brother's and sister to find where you are living and get your address for me but nothing happen. So I just plead the blood of Jesus over you and the situation. I ask to be move to another prison and they transfer me to Dequincy, La. Well to cut, make a short story here I'am my baby girl your daddy or father. Also Herbert said Hello.
Kisha it's pretty hard to express not being there with you as a father to his children. or child. Yes you are me only child and I love you with all my heart. I just ask you for forgiveness once again. I know you do, I remember the letter you wrote me about (5) Five of (6) six year's ago and it realy touch my soul and I still have it in my heart. Whereas, them pictures I send to you. I was very, very disappoint of you not sending me a picture or two of you. Baby girl that will lift me up sweet-heart _I need a picture_ of you once and a while and I put the imagination of you in my mind.
Kisha I been incarcerated (13) year's and it's; hurts me for not being there to help you. I am just reaping what I sowes as the Bible says's the life style that I was in, but truely God bless me in the incarceration. I am in Christ a new creation: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. 2 Corinthians 5:17 Read it. Also I am asking you to go to the Lord house sometime OK. Now Kisha I am in here for Arm Robbery I always was trying to make money fast. You was (8) year's old going on (9) year's old when I came to jail, you are twenty (2) now and a woman, but alway be my baby girl Kisha. there is many thing's I have to share with you. I will surprize you when I come home. Now I still have a few year's but by the Grace of God. Well I am about to receive a blessing very soon my lawyer inform me and I will tell you more about it OK. so keep in touch with me baby girl I love you. _Send me a picture. I am serious a picture from you._
Now I am getting sleep and Herbert and me is in the same Dorm OK. Tell you mother Hello and I still love her OK (smile) because you are our daughter our beautiful daughter. Tell Ms Ann + James + everyone Hi.
Love you
Daddy
On Back
Kisha I been transfer the next Day I wrote this letter. I'am closer Home now, I'am in DCI that in Jackson, La. Next to Baton Rouge. Dequincy were I was it - was so, so for 30 mile from Texas.
So Now I'am about 1½ Hour from New Orleans.
Love you
Baby Girl.
May God Bless.
Write soon.
"Praise the Lord"
Hi Baby Girl
Well first of all I give thank's to the Father God and his Son Jesus our Lord and saviour.
Kisha I prayed that I will here from you, but the year's passed and I been asking my Brother's and sister to find where you are living and get your address for me but nothing happen. So I just plead the blood of Jesus over you and the situation. I ask to be move to another prison and they transfer me to Dequincy, La. Well to cut, make a short story here I'am my baby girl your daddy or father. Also Herbert said Hello.
Kisha it's pretty hard to express not being there with you as a father to his children. or child. Yes you are me only child and I love you with all my heart. I just ask you for forgiveness once again. I know you do, I remember the letter you wrote me about (5) Five of (6) six year's ago and it realy touch my soul and I still have it in my heart. Whereas, them pictures I send to you. I was very, very disappoint of you not sending me a picture or two of you. Baby girl that will lift me up sweet-heart _I need a picture_ of you once and a while and I put the imagination of you in my mind.
Kisha I been incarcerated (13) year's and it's; hurts me for not being there to help you. I am just reaping what I sowes as the Bible says's the life style that I was in, but truely God bless me in the incarceration. I am in Christ a new creation: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. 2 Corinthians 5:17 Read it. Also I am asking you to go to the Lord house sometime OK. Now Kisha I am in here for Arm Robbery I always was trying to make money fast. You was (8) year's old going on (9) year's old when I came to jail, you are twenty (2) now and a woman, but alway be my baby girl Kisha. there is many thing's I have to share with you. I will surprize you when I come home. Now I still have a few year's but by the Grace of God. Well I am about to receive a blessing very soon my lawyer inform me and I will tell you more about it OK. so keep in touch with me baby girl I love you. _Send me a picture. I am serious a picture from you._
Now I am getting sleep and Herbert and me is in the same Dorm OK. Tell you mother Hello and I still love her OK (smile) because you are our daughter our beautiful daughter. Tell Ms Ann + James + everyone Hi.
Love you
Daddy
On Back
Kisha I been transfer the next Day I wrote this letter. I'am closer Home now, I'am in DCI that in Jackson, La. Next to Baton Rouge. Dequincy were I was it - was so, so for 30 mile from Texas.
So Now I'am about 1½ Hour from New Orleans.
Love you
Baby Girl.
May God Bless.
Write soon.
The Pearl of Orr's Island
Then the narrow straits that look so full of rocks and quicksands, widen into a broad, clear passage, and one after another, rosy with a celestial dawn, and ringing silver bells of gladness, the isles of the blessed lift themselves up on the horizon, and the soul is flooded with an atmosphere of light and joy. As the burden of Christian fell off at the cross and was lost in the sepulchre, so in these hours of celestial vision the whole weight of life's anguish is lifted, and passes away like a dream; and the soul, seeing the boundless ocean of Divine love, wherein all human hopes and joys and sorrows lie so tenderly upholden, comes and casts the one little drop of its personal will and personal existence with gladness into the Fatherly depth.
—Harriet Beecher Stowe, The Pearl of Orr's Island, p382.
—Harriet Beecher Stowe, The Pearl of Orr's Island, p382.
Psalm 127:2
It is in vain that you rise up early
and go late to rest,
eating the bread of anxious toil;
for He gives to His beloved sleep.
—Psalm 127:2 ESV
and go late to rest,
eating the bread of anxious toil;
for He gives to His beloved sleep.
—Psalm 127:2 ESV
The Pearl of Orr's Island
If you break the cup out of which a soul has been used to take the wine of the gospel, you often spill the very wine itself. After all, these forms are but shadows of which the substance is Christ.
—Harriet Beecher Stowe, The Pearl of Orr's Island, p284.
—Harriet Beecher Stowe, The Pearl of Orr's Island, p284.
The Pioneers
So prodigious was the number of the birds [passenger pigeons] that the scattering fire of the guns, with the hurling of missiles and the cries of the boys, had no other effect than to break off small flocks from the immense masses that continued to dart along the valley, as if the whole of the feathered tribe were pouring through that one pass. None pretended to collect the game, which lay scattered over the fields in such profusion as to cover the very ground with fluttering victims....
"This comes of settling a country!" he [Leather-Stocking] said. "Here have I known the pigeon to fly for forty long years, and, till you made your clearings, there was nobody to skeart or to hurt them, I loved to see them come into the woods, for they were company to a body, hurting nothing — being, as it was, as harmless as a garter-snake. But now it gives me sore thoughts when I hear the frighty things whizzing through the air, for I know it's only a motion to bring out all the brats of the village. Well, the Lord won't see the waste of his creatures for nothing, and right will be done to the pigeons, as well as others, by and by."
—James Fenimore Cooper, The Pioneers ©1823, ch22.
"This comes of settling a country!" he [Leather-Stocking] said. "Here have I known the pigeon to fly for forty long years, and, till you made your clearings, there was nobody to skeart or to hurt them, I loved to see them come into the woods, for they were company to a body, hurting nothing — being, as it was, as harmless as a garter-snake. But now it gives me sore thoughts when I hear the frighty things whizzing through the air, for I know it's only a motion to bring out all the brats of the village. Well, the Lord won't see the waste of his creatures for nothing, and right will be done to the pigeons, as well as others, by and by."
—James Fenimore Cooper, The Pioneers ©1823, ch22.
Darkness of waters
Then the earth shook and quaked;
And the foundations of the mountains were trembling
And were shaken, because he was angry.
Smoke went up out of his nostrils,
And fire from his mouth devoured;
Coals were kindled by it.
He bowed the heavens also, and came down
With thick darkness under his feet.
He rode upon a cherub and flew;
And he sped upon the wings of the wind.
He made darkness his hiding place, his canopy around him,
Darkness of waters, thick clouds of the skies.
—Psalm 18:7-11 NASB
And the foundations of the mountains were trembling
And were shaken, because he was angry.
Smoke went up out of his nostrils,
And fire from his mouth devoured;
Coals were kindled by it.
He bowed the heavens also, and came down
With thick darkness under his feet.
He rode upon a cherub and flew;
And he sped upon the wings of the wind.
He made darkness his hiding place, his canopy around him,
Darkness of waters, thick clouds of the skies.
—Psalm 18:7-11 NASB
Father Brown on Miracles
"I'm exactly in the position of the man who said, 'I can believe the impossible, but not the improbable.' ... It really is more natural to believe a preternatural story, that deals with things we don't understand, than a natural story that contradicts things we do understand."
—Father Brown, in G. K. Chesterton, The Curse of the Golden Cross, The Complete Father Brown ch29, quoting Oscar Wilde, The Decay of Lying, which says "Man can believe the impossible, but man can never believe the improbable."
—Father Brown, in G. K. Chesterton, The Curse of the Golden Cross, The Complete Father Brown ch29, quoting Oscar Wilde, The Decay of Lying, which says "Man can believe the impossible, but man can never believe the improbable."
Father Brown on Aviation
I've flown a good deal there myself, of course, and I know most of the fellows about here who flew in the war; but there are a whole lot of people taking to it out there now whom I never heard of in my life. I suppose it will be like motoring soon, and every man in the States will have [an aeroplane].
—G. K. Chesterton, The Arrow of Heaven, The Complete Father Brown ch26, 1926.
—G. K. Chesterton, The Arrow of Heaven, The Complete Father Brown ch26, 1926.
Stories
Each of these quotes can tell several tales, if you care to listen. Their stories are intertwined, as are all men's, but are as disparate as their characters. Foremost, they are a part of a longer work, whether fact or fiction, written for a purpose. They also tell us something about the author, by what they say or by what they leave out. No one can write something without putting part of oneself into it, for others to see or to overlook. Then, they convey something about their readers. We would not read books if we could not identify with the characters or ideas in some way; if we could not see ourselves or others in the Númenóreans or in the poetry. Something in each of these quotes caught my eye that made me record it here. I may not know what it was any more than you do. But its inmost note vibrated either in harmony or dissonance with my feelings when I read it. If I posted it here, it probably still does. Finally, they tell your story. Whatever you impute to them comes ultimately from yourself. We know ourselves only through what we see in others. What's your story?
The Pilgrim's Progress
I took notice of what was very remarkable: the water of that river [of Death] was lower at this time than ever I saw it in all my life; so he [Mr. Fearing] went over at last, not much above wetshod.
—John Bunyan, The Pilgrim's Progress, Part 2: The Sixth Stage.
—John Bunyan, The Pilgrim's Progress, Part 2: The Sixth Stage.
Father Brown on Sleep
Do you know what sleep is? Do you know that every man who sleeps believes in God? It is a sacrament; for it is an act of faith and it is a food.
—Father Brown, in G. K. Chesterton's The Honour of Israel Gow (The Complete Father Brown ch6)
—Father Brown, in G. K. Chesterton's The Honour of Israel Gow (The Complete Father Brown ch6)
Abigail Adams
It is not in the still calm of life, or the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed.... The habits of a vigorous mind are formed in contending with difficulties. All history will convince you of this, and that wisdom and penetration are the fruit of experience, not the lessons of retirement and leisure. Great necessities call out great virtues. When a mind is raised, and animated by scenes that engage the heart, then those qualities which would otherwise lay dormant, wake into life and form the character of the hero and the statesman.
—Abigail Adams, quoted in David McCullough, John Adams p226
—Abigail Adams, quoted in David McCullough, John Adams p226
The Lost Road
"That cannot be, even if I wish it. It is against the law."
"It is against the rule. Laws are commands upon the will and are binding. Rules are conditions; they may have exceptions."
"But are there ever any exceptions?"
"Rules may be strict, yet they are the means, not the ends, of government. There are exceptions; for there is that which governs and is above the rules. Behold, it is by the chinks in the wall that light comes through, whereby men become aware of the light and therein perceive the wall and how it stands. The veil is woven, and each thread goes an appointed course, tracing a design; yet the tissue is not impenetrable, or the design would not be guessed; and if the design were not guessed, the veil would not be perceived, and all would dwell in darkness.... To each under the rule some unique fate is given, and one is exempted from that which is a rule to others."
—J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lost Road, The History of Middle-Earth V, p48.
"It is against the rule. Laws are commands upon the will and are binding. Rules are conditions; they may have exceptions."
"But are there ever any exceptions?"
"Rules may be strict, yet they are the means, not the ends, of government. There are exceptions; for there is that which governs and is above the rules. Behold, it is by the chinks in the wall that light comes through, whereby men become aware of the light and therein perceive the wall and how it stands. The veil is woven, and each thread goes an appointed course, tracing a design; yet the tissue is not impenetrable, or the design would not be guessed; and if the design were not guessed, the veil would not be perceived, and all would dwell in darkness.... To each under the rule some unique fate is given, and one is exempted from that which is a rule to others."
—J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lost Road, The History of Middle-Earth V, p48.
Þus cwæþ Ælfwine WÃdlást
Þus cwæþ Ælfwine WÃdlást:
Fela bið on Westwegum werum uncúðra,
wundra ond wihta, wlitescyne lond,
eardgeard Ylfa ond Ésa bliss.
Lýt ǽnig wát hwylc his longað sÃe
þám þe eftsÃðes yldu getwǽfeð.
Thus spake Ælfwine the far-travelled: "Many things there are in the West-regions unknown to Men, marvels and strange beings: a land lovely to behold, the homeland of the Elves and the bliss of the Gods. Little doth any man know what longing is his whom old age cutteth off from return."
—J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lost Road, The History of Middle-Earth V, pp 44, 103, and 203.
Fela bið on Westwegum werum uncúðra,
wundra ond wihta, wlitescyne lond,
eardgeard Ylfa ond Ésa bliss.
Lýt ǽnig wát hwylc his longað sÃe
þám þe eftsÃðes yldu getwǽfeð.
Thus spake Ælfwine the far-travelled: "Many things there are in the West-regions unknown to Men, marvels and strange beings: a land lovely to behold, the homeland of the Elves and the bliss of the Gods. Little doth any man know what longing is his whom old age cutteth off from return."
—J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lost Road, The History of Middle-Earth V, pp 44, 103, and 203.
And Let this Feeble Body Fail
"The sufferings of this present time are
not worthy to be compared with the glory
which shall be revealed to us." - Romans 8:18.
And let this feeble body fail,
And let it droop and die;
My soul shall quit the mournful vale,
And soar to worlds on high;
Shall join the disembodied saints,
And find its long-sought rest,
(That only bliss for which it pants)
In my Redeemer's breast.
In hope of that immortal crown,
I now the cross sustain,
And gladly wander up and down,
And smile at toil and pain:
I suffer out my threescore years,
Till my Deliverer come,
And wipe away his servant's tears,
And take his exile home.
Surely he will not long delay:
I hear his Spirit cry,
"Arise, my love, make haste away!
Go, get thee up, and die.
O'er death, who now has lost his sting,
I give thee victory;
And with me my reward I bring,
I bring my heaven for thee."
O what hath Jesus bought for me!
Before my ravished eyes
Givers of life divine I see,
And trees of paradise;
They flourish in perpetual bloom,
Fruit every month they give;
And to the healing leaves who come
Eternally shall live.
I see a world of spirits bright
Who reap the pleasures there;
They all are robed in purest white,
And conquering palms they bear:
Adorned by their Redeemer's grace,
They close pursue the Lamb;
And every shining front displays
The unutterable name.
They drink the vivifying stream,
They pluck the ambrosial fruit,
And each records the praise of him
Who tuned his golden lute:
At once they strike the harmonious wire,
And hymn the great Three-One:
He hears; he smiles; and all the choir
Fall down before his throne.
O what are all my sufferings here,
If, Lord, thou count me meet
With that enraptured host to appear,
And worship at thy feet!
Give joy or grief, give ease or pain,
Take life or friends away:
I come, to find them all again
In that eternal day.
—Charles Wesley, the first verse of which was quoted in Harriet Beecher Stowe, Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp, volume 2 chapter 11 p368.
not worthy to be compared with the glory
which shall be revealed to us." - Romans 8:18.
And let this feeble body fail,
And let it droop and die;
My soul shall quit the mournful vale,
And soar to worlds on high;
Shall join the disembodied saints,
And find its long-sought rest,
(That only bliss for which it pants)
In my Redeemer's breast.
In hope of that immortal crown,
I now the cross sustain,
And gladly wander up and down,
And smile at toil and pain:
I suffer out my threescore years,
Till my Deliverer come,
And wipe away his servant's tears,
And take his exile home.
Surely he will not long delay:
I hear his Spirit cry,
"Arise, my love, make haste away!
Go, get thee up, and die.
O'er death, who now has lost his sting,
I give thee victory;
And with me my reward I bring,
I bring my heaven for thee."
O what hath Jesus bought for me!
Before my ravished eyes
Givers of life divine I see,
And trees of paradise;
They flourish in perpetual bloom,
Fruit every month they give;
And to the healing leaves who come
Eternally shall live.
I see a world of spirits bright
Who reap the pleasures there;
They all are robed in purest white,
And conquering palms they bear:
Adorned by their Redeemer's grace,
They close pursue the Lamb;
And every shining front displays
The unutterable name.
They drink the vivifying stream,
They pluck the ambrosial fruit,
And each records the praise of him
Who tuned his golden lute:
At once they strike the harmonious wire,
And hymn the great Three-One:
He hears; he smiles; and all the choir
Fall down before his throne.
O what are all my sufferings here,
If, Lord, thou count me meet
With that enraptured host to appear,
And worship at thy feet!
Give joy or grief, give ease or pain,
Take life or friends away:
I come, to find them all again
In that eternal day.
—Charles Wesley, the first verse of which was quoted in Harriet Beecher Stowe, Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp, volume 2 chapter 11 p368.
Dred
The mouth of the North is stuffed with cotton, and will be kept full as long as it suits us.
—Harriet Beecher Stowe, Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp, volume 2 chapter 32 p537.
—Harriet Beecher Stowe, Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp, volume 2 chapter 32 p537.
Revelations of Divine Love
Before this I had had a great and longing desire that God should give me deliverance from this life. I had often considered the woes of this present world, and the joys and blessedness of the future. Even if there had been no suffering in this life, but no Lord either, I sometimes thought it would have been more than I could have borne. This grieved me, and made me long all the more eagerly. Besides, because of my own wretchedness, slothfulness, and incapacity, I did not want to live and toil as it fell to me to do.
To all this our Lord in his courtesy gave me an answer that brought comfort and patience. He said, "Suddenly you will be taken from all your pain, all your sickness, all your discomfort, and all your woe. You will come up above, with me as your reward, and you will be filled to the full with love and blessedness. Never again will there be any sort of suffering, or unhappiness, or failure of will. It will be all joy and bliss eternally. Why should it grieve you to suffer a while, seeing that this is my will and my glory?
–Dame Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love, translated by Clifton Wolters, ch64 p177.
To all this our Lord in his courtesy gave me an answer that brought comfort and patience. He said, "Suddenly you will be taken from all your pain, all your sickness, all your discomfort, and all your woe. You will come up above, with me as your reward, and you will be filled to the full with love and blessedness. Never again will there be any sort of suffering, or unhappiness, or failure of will. It will be all joy and bliss eternally. Why should it grieve you to suffer a while, seeing that this is my will and my glory?
–Dame Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love, translated by Clifton Wolters, ch64 p177.
Proverbs 24:21-22
My son, fear the LORD and the king;
Do not associate with those who are given to change,
For their calamity will rise suddenly,
And who knows the ruin that comes from both of them?
—Proverbs 24:21-22 NASB
Do not associate with those who are given to change,
For their calamity will rise suddenly,
And who knows the ruin that comes from both of them?
—Proverbs 24:21-22 NASB
Barack Obama
I face this challenge with profound humility, and knowledge of my own limitations. But ... I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on Earth.
—Barack Obama's victory speech in St. Paul, Minnesota http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbbIQFcEhcQ
—Barack Obama's victory speech in St. Paul, Minnesota http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbbIQFcEhcQ
Robert Frost
He thinks if he could teach him that, he'd be
Some good perhaps to someone in the world.
–Robert Frost, The Death of the Hired Man, 1915.
Some good perhaps to someone in the world.
–Robert Frost, The Death of the Hired Man, 1915.
Dred
"Dere's one thing the man said at de last camp-meeting. He preached 'bout it, and I couldn't make out a word he said, 'cause I an't smart about preaching like I be about most things. But he said dis yer so often that I couldn't help 'member it. Says he, it was dish yer way: 'Come unto me, all ye labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.'"
"Rest, rest, rest!" said the woman, thoughtfully, and drawing a long sigh. "O, how much I want it!
—Harriet Beecher Stowe, Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp, volume 1 chapter 8 p96.
"Rest, rest, rest!" said the woman, thoughtfully, and drawing a long sigh. "O, how much I want it!
—Harriet Beecher Stowe, Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp, volume 1 chapter 8 p96.
Dred
"How long, O Lord, how long? Awake! Why sleepest thou, O Lord? Why withdrawest thou thy hand? Pluck it out of thy bosom! We see not the sign! There is no more any prophet, neither any among us, that knoweth how long! Wilt thou hold thy peace forever? Behold the blood of the poor crieth unto thee! Behold how they hunt for our lives! Behold how they pervert justice, and take away the key of knowledge! They enter not in themselves, and those that are entering in they hinder! Behold our wives taken for a prey! Behold our daughters sold to be harlots! Art thou a God that judgest on the earth? Wilt thou not avenge thine own elect, that cry unto thee day and night? Behold the scorning of them that are at ease, and the contempt of the proud! Behold how they speak wickedly concerning oppression! They set their mouth against the heavens, and their tongue walketh through the earth! Wilt thou hold thy peace for all these things, and afflict us very sore?"
—Harriet Beecher Stowe, Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp, volume 2 chapter 22 p460.
—Harriet Beecher Stowe, Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp, volume 2 chapter 22 p460.
Pride and Prejudice
"I certainly have not the talent which some people possess," said Darcy, "of conversing easily with those I have never seen before. I cannot catch their tone of conversation, or appear interested in their concerns, as I often see done."
"My fingers," said Elizabeth, "do not move over this instrument in the masterly manner which I see so many women's do. They have not the same force or rapidity, and do not produce the same expression. But then I have always supposed it to be my own fault—because I will not take the trouble of practising. It is not that I do not believe my fingers as capable as any other woman's of superior execution."
—Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
"My fingers," said Elizabeth, "do not move over this instrument in the masterly manner which I see so many women's do. They have not the same force or rapidity, and do not produce the same expression. But then I have always supposed it to be my own fault—because I will not take the trouble of practising. It is not that I do not believe my fingers as capable as any other woman's of superior execution."
—Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
"Oh, Aslan," said Lucy. "Will you tell us how to get into your country from our world?"
"I shall be telling you all the time," said Aslan. "But I will not tell you how long or short the way will be; only that it lies across a river. But do not fear that, for I am the great Bridge Builder."
—C. S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
"I shall be telling you all the time," said Aslan. "But I will not tell you how long or short the way will be; only that it lies across a river. But do not fear that, for I am the great Bridge Builder."
—C. S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
Mark Lowrey
If you don't have heretical ideas brought up in your bible studies, you're doing something wrong.
—Attributed to Mark Lowrey, the founder of RUF
—Attributed to Mark Lowrey, the founder of RUF
Bertrand Russell
That Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins—all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul's habitation henceforth be safely built....
Brief and powerless is Man's life; on him and all his race the slow, sure doom falls pitiless and dark. Blind to good and evil, reckless of destruction, omnipotent matter rolls on its relentless way; for Man, condemned to-day to lose his dearest, to-morrow himself to pass through the gate of darkness, it remains only to cherish, ere yet the blow falls, the lofty thoughts that ennoble his little day; disdaining the coward terrors of the slave of Fate, to worship at the shrine that his own hands have built; undismayed by the empire of chance, to preserve a mind free from the wanton tyranny that rules his outward life; proudly defiant of the irresistible forces that tolerate, for a moment, his knowledge and his condemnation, to sustain alone, a weary but unyielding Atlas, the world that his own ideals have fashioned despite the trampling march of unconscious power.
—Bertrand Russell, A Free Man's Worship
Read the whole thing.
Brief and powerless is Man's life; on him and all his race the slow, sure doom falls pitiless and dark. Blind to good and evil, reckless of destruction, omnipotent matter rolls on its relentless way; for Man, condemned to-day to lose his dearest, to-morrow himself to pass through the gate of darkness, it remains only to cherish, ere yet the blow falls, the lofty thoughts that ennoble his little day; disdaining the coward terrors of the slave of Fate, to worship at the shrine that his own hands have built; undismayed by the empire of chance, to preserve a mind free from the wanton tyranny that rules his outward life; proudly defiant of the irresistible forces that tolerate, for a moment, his knowledge and his condemnation, to sustain alone, a weary but unyielding Atlas, the world that his own ideals have fashioned despite the trampling march of unconscious power.
—Bertrand Russell, A Free Man's Worship
Read the whole thing.
Isaac Newton
The main Business of natural Philosophy is to argue from Phaenomena without feigning Hypotheses, and to deduce Causes from Effects, till we come to the very first Cause, which certainly is not mechanical.... Whence is it that Nature doth nothing in vain; and whence arises all that Order and Beauty which we see in the World?... How came the Bodies of Animals to be contrived with so much Art, and for what ends were their several Parts? Was the Eye contrived without Skill in Opticks, and the Ear without Knowledge of Sounds? How do the Motions of the Body follow from the Will, and whence is the instinct in Animals?... And these things being rightly dispatch'd, does it not appear from Phaenomena that there is a Being incorporeal, living, intelligent, omnipresent, who in infinite Space, as it were in his Sensory, sees the things themselves intimately, and thoroughly perceives them, and comprehends them wholly by their immediate presence to himself.... And though every true Step made in this Philosophy brings us not immediately to the Knowledge of the first Cause, yet it brings us nearer to it, and on that account is to be highly valued.
—Isaac Newton, Opticks (England: 1704; reprint, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1931), pp. 369–370
—Isaac Newton, Opticks (England: 1704; reprint, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1931), pp. 369–370
Voices in Stone
These [Biblical] indications [of Hittites] could not have failed to arouse the interest if antiquarians had some monument, find, or other testimony of antiquity proved the existence of this lost people; but in the eyes of 19th century scholars the Bible was always considered an unreliable source.
When we consider the activities of the investigators, the brilliant achievements of the archeologists and philologists of this period, this prejudice today seems strange and unjustified. The only valid explanation in retrospect seems to lie in the duality of the heritage of The Age of Enlightenment: timeless search for knowledge and truth, allied to an uncritical contempt for everything which had for so long been considered the sole refuge of this truth.
—Ernest Doblhofer, Voices in Stone - The Decipherment of Ancient Scripts and Writings, Viking Press, 1961.
When we consider the activities of the investigators, the brilliant achievements of the archeologists and philologists of this period, this prejudice today seems strange and unjustified. The only valid explanation in retrospect seems to lie in the duality of the heritage of The Age of Enlightenment: timeless search for knowledge and truth, allied to an uncritical contempt for everything which had for so long been considered the sole refuge of this truth.
—Ernest Doblhofer, Voices in Stone - The Decipherment of Ancient Scripts and Writings, Viking Press, 1961.
John W. Peterson
God, the All Wise and Creator of the human intellect,
Guide our search for truth and knowledge, all our thoughts and ways direct.
Help us build the towers of learning that would make us wise, astute,
On the rock of holy Scripture – truth revealed and absolute.
O how vast the shores of learning – there are still uncharted seas,
And they call to bold adventure, those who turn from sloth and ease.
But we need Thy hand to guide us, in the studies we pursue,
And the presence of Thy Spirit, to illumine all we do.
May the things we learn, so meager, never lift our hearts in pride,
Till in foolish self-reliance, we would wander from Thy side.
Let them only bind us closer, Lord, to Thee in whom we find,
A very fountainhead of wisdom, light and life to all mankind.
—John W. Peterson
Guide our search for truth and knowledge, all our thoughts and ways direct.
Help us build the towers of learning that would make us wise, astute,
On the rock of holy Scripture – truth revealed and absolute.
O how vast the shores of learning – there are still uncharted seas,
And they call to bold adventure, those who turn from sloth and ease.
But we need Thy hand to guide us, in the studies we pursue,
And the presence of Thy Spirit, to illumine all we do.
May the things we learn, so meager, never lift our hearts in pride,
Till in foolish self-reliance, we would wander from Thy side.
Let them only bind us closer, Lord, to Thee in whom we find,
A very fountainhead of wisdom, light and life to all mankind.
—John W. Peterson
James Fenimore Cooper
Notwithstanding the increasing warmth of the amicable contest, the most decorous Christian assembly, not even excepting those in which its reverend ministers are collected, might have learned a wholesome lesson of moderation from the forbearance and courtesy of the disputants. The words of Uncas were received with the same deep attention as those which fell from the maturer wisdom of his father; and so far from manifesting any impatience, neither spoke in reply, until a few moments of silent meditation were, seemingly, bestowed in deliberating on what had already been said....
Hawkeye was to every appearance fast losing ground, and the point was about to be decided against him, when he arose to his feet, and shaking off his apathy, he suddenly assumed the manner of an Indian, and adopted all the arts of native eloquence....
The Mohicans listened gravely, and with countenances that reflected the sentiments of the speaker. Conviction gradually wrought its influence, and toward the close of Hawkeye's speech, his sentences were accompanied by the customary exclamation of commendation. In short, Uncas and his father became converts to his way of thinking, abandoning their own previously expressed opinions with a liberality and candor that, had they been the representatives of some great and civilized people, would have infallibly worked their political ruin, by destroying forever their reputation for consistency. The instant the matter in discussion was decided, the debate, and everything connected with it, except the result appeared to be forgotten.
—James Fenimore Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans ©1826, ch19.
Hawkeye was to every appearance fast losing ground, and the point was about to be decided against him, when he arose to his feet, and shaking off his apathy, he suddenly assumed the manner of an Indian, and adopted all the arts of native eloquence....
The Mohicans listened gravely, and with countenances that reflected the sentiments of the speaker. Conviction gradually wrought its influence, and toward the close of Hawkeye's speech, his sentences were accompanied by the customary exclamation of commendation. In short, Uncas and his father became converts to his way of thinking, abandoning their own previously expressed opinions with a liberality and candor that, had they been the representatives of some great and civilized people, would have infallibly worked their political ruin, by destroying forever their reputation for consistency. The instant the matter in discussion was decided, the debate, and everything connected with it, except the result appeared to be forgotten.
—James Fenimore Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans ©1826, ch19.
David L. Johnson
Some people used to claim that, if enough monkeys sat in front of enough typewriters and typed long enough, eventually one of them would reproduce the collected works of Shakespeare. The internet has proven this not to be the case.
—David L. Johnson, Lehigh Math Dept
(Sort of.)
—David L. Johnson, Lehigh Math Dept
(Sort of.)
Charles Spurgeon
Enough is not only as good as a feast, but it is all that the veriest glutton can truly enjoy.
—Charles Spurgeon, Morning, February 14.
—Charles Spurgeon, Morning, February 14.
Enough
"Enough House," said I; "that's a curious name, miss."
"Yes," she replied; "but it meant more than it said. It meant, when it was given, that whoever had this house could want nothing else. They must have been easily satisfied in those days, I should think."
—Charles Dickens, Great Expectations, Chapter VIII
"Yes," she replied; "but it meant more than it said. It meant, when it was given, that whoever had this house could want nothing else. They must have been easily satisfied in those days, I should think."
—Charles Dickens, Great Expectations, Chapter VIII
Many Waters
Many waters cannot quench love; Neither can the floods drown it.
—Madeline L'Engle, Many Waters, quoting Song of Solomon 8:7 KJV
—Madeline L'Engle, Many Waters, quoting Song of Solomon 8:7 KJV
Father Brown
All men matter. You matter. I matter. It's the hardest thing in theology to believe.... We matter to God — God only knows why.
—Father Brown, in G. K. Chesterton's The Quick One (The Complete Father Brown ch44, quoted in Philip Yancey, The Bible Jesus Read, ch5 p145.)
—Father Brown, in G. K. Chesterton's The Quick One (The Complete Father Brown ch44, quoted in Philip Yancey, The Bible Jesus Read, ch5 p145.)
Philip Yancey
Children learn to communicate by talking about pooping and tinkling, then grow into repressed adults, then make their children out to be nothing but their own bodies, then in senile old age revert once again to conversation about pooping and tinkling. What is the point of this merry-go-round?
—Philip Yancey, The Bible Jesus Read, ch5 p145.
—Philip Yancey, The Bible Jesus Read, ch5 p145.
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