Steve > Steve's Quotes

“But I love your feet
only because they walked
upon the earth and upon
the wind and upon the waters,
until they found me.”
― Pablo Neruda

“For the power of Man to make himself what he pleases means... the power of some men to make other men what THEY please.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man

“...when someone asked Bonhoeffer whether he shouldn't join the German Christians in order to work against them from within, he answered that he couldn't. 'If you board the wrong train,' he said, 'it is no use running along the corridor in the opposite direction.”
― Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy

“There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously - no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

“We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice, we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“we do not say that a man who takes no interest in politics is a man who minds his own business; we say that he has no business here at all.’38”
― Mick Hume, Revolting!: How the Establishment are Undermining Democracy and What They’re Afraid Of

“I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies:
1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.
2. Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.
3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things.”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time

“I would rather feel compassion than know the meaning of it. I would hope to act with compassion without thinking of personal gain.”
― Thomas Aquinas

“Hope” in this sense is not a feeling. It is a virtue. You have to practice it, like a difficult piece on the violin or a tricky shot at tennis. You practice the virtue of hope through worship and prayer, through invoking the One God, through reading and re-imagining the scriptural story, and through consciously holding the unknown future within the unshakable divine promises.”
― Tom Wright, Paul: A Biography

“I am struck by how sharing our weakness and difficulties is more nourishing to others than sharing our qualities and successes.”
― Jean Vanier, Community and Growth

“What separates privilege from entitlement is gratitude.”
― Brené Brown

“Our anxiety does not empty tomorrow of its sorrows, but only empties today of its strengths.”
― C. H. Spurgeon

“God is too good to be unkind and He is too wise to be mistaken. And when we cannot trace His hand, we must trust His heart.”
― Charles Spurgeon

“Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God,
But only he who sees takes off his shoes;
The rest sit round and pluck blackberries.”
― Elizabeth Barrett Browning

“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”
― T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets

“Never respond to an angry person with a fiery comeback, even if he deserves it...Don't allow his anger to become your anger.”
― Bohdi Sanders, Warrior Wisdom: Ageless Wisdom for the Modern Warrior

“The price of a memory, is the memory of the sorrow it brings.”
― Pittacus Lore, I Am Number Four

“Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of each man which cannot be satisfied by any created thing but only by God the Creator, made know through Jesus Christ.”
― Pascal

“Frodo: I wish the Ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.
Gandalf: 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 to us.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

“The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world that it leaves to its children.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“We must be ready to allow ourselves to be interrupted by God.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless.
Not to speak is to speak.
Not to act is to act.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.”
― Cicero

“A room without books is like a body without a soul.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“Six mistakes mankind keeps making century after century:
Believing that personal gain is made by crushing others;
Worrying about things that cannot be changed or corrected;
Insisting that a thing is impossible because we cannot accomplish it;
Refusing to set aside trivial preferences;
Neglecting development and refinement of the mind;
Attempting to compel others to believe and live as we do.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“Throughout history, men have made many things to contain God: churches, temples, denominations, ceremonies. All of these have mixed motives and chequered histories. God doesn’t ‘need’ any of these things, but it is in humanity’s nature to keep building houses, and it is in God’s nature to keep turning up.”
― Nick Page, The Badly Behaved Bible: Thinking again about the story of Scripture

“In times of war, the law falls silent.

Silent enim leges inter arma”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“...if you change ownership of the institutions then you can change ownership of the facts, you can alter the structure of belief, what is agreed upon, that is what they are doing, Eilish, it is really quite simple, the NAP is trying to change what you and I call reality, they want to muddy it like water, if you say one this is another thing and you say it enough times, then it must be so, and if you keep saying it over and over people accept it as true...”
― Paul Lynch, Prophet Song