Criss Jami Quotes - Page 2

I'm a lion in a strange land.
Criss Jami
Sometimes it takes a lowly, title-less man to humble the world. Kings, rulers, CEOs, judges, doctors, pastors, they are already expected to be greater and wiser.
Criss Jami
In the land where excellence is commended, not envied, where weakness is aided, not mocked, there is no question as to how its inhabitants are all superhuman.
Criss Jami
Where everyone wants to be a leader, it makes one a follower to want to be a leader, and a leader to know what to follow.
Criss Jami
Power without compassion is like a giant that blocks the sunlight.
Criss Jami
Sadly enough, some people are insecure in such a way that they cannot bear the thought of the sovereignty of God, the thought of His Being as greater than themselves. It makes them feel insignificant. But I know if I were to worship and obey anything, I would like it far greater than myself or any person or human system, preferably to the point that which it, perhaps, in all its majesty, makes me feel lost and even 'creatural' in my sheer humanity. Only this God - He who is great beyond human measure, yet still considers His creation precious - I find to be more than worthy of praise; otherwise, I bow down and worship nothing. And if the thought of such a superior and almighty God were to indeed offend me, I would have to remember that it is because I am only as significant as the things which I am idolizing, things which are ultimately separating me, the creation, from my original Creator.
Criss Jami
Pretentiousness isn't always just big words and meaningless jargon, but also pretty words that either when put into action don't mean beans or hurt you in the long run. Oftentimes, the former appeals to the intellect whereas the latter appeals to the heart.
Criss Jami
To claim that one can never live a positive life with a negative mind is a very negative claim to make!
Criss Jami
I treat my thoughts like an old person treats their valuables: I cannot for the life of me proceed to throwing them out.
Criss Jami
I suspect that 'Kindness and Cruelty' and 'Mercy and Justice' all have secret affairs, as though they rendezvous only within certain sophisticated souls: those who hate being offensive, but love telling the truth.
Criss Jami
In the age of technology there is constant access to vast amounts of information. The basket overflows; people get overwhelmed; the eye of the storm is not so much what goes on in the world, it is the confusion of how to think, feel, digest, and react to what goes on.
Criss Jami
A man of God has many brothers. He is a wounded soldier - he is familiar with the pain one feels in his heart, as a close and loving brother, when a brother falls victim of evil men or turns to evil desires (the latter sometimes even betrayal). Because of this, too, he is and must be well-acquainted with and trained in the strengths of hope and the gentleness of forgiveness and mercy.
Criss Jami
The best of fiction, as we know, of course, doesn't tell the truth; it tales the truth.
Criss Jami
Lingering, bottled-up anger never reveals the 'true colors' of an individual. It, on the contrary, becomes all mixed up, rotten, confused, forms a highly combustible, chemical compound then explodes as something foreign, something very different than one's natural self.
Criss Jami
I wouldn't think that God is quite as much concerned with whether or not one actually sins as He is with whether or not in one's heart one genuinely wants to turn from sin; and therefore, continues working passionately with Him in doing so. It is not some pleasure of God's, as some might imagine, to stand around critiquing, arms crossed, holding a whip. I suppose that when someone weeps over their sins, He extends His hands; He wants them to lift their head and embrace Him and the mercy He's willing to show. But when someone is proud of their sins, He delivers His justice swiftly and righteously. Sin does not intimidate God - although He takes it very seriously - it does no real harm to Him whatsoever, only to the sinner and to other people: and He loves people.
Criss Jami
You can perhaps, in a number of circumstances, tell yourself that you can't have more than you have until you do better than you're doing, but by all means steer clear of its reverse, the creed of defeat, in saying that you can't do better than you're doing until you can have more than you have.
Criss Jami
Man's delight in the Lord is the absolute peak of human triumph. He praises God when full of joy, and when not, he praises God to become full of joy. For to know and to live as though God is worthy of all praise, in all one's circumstances, whether seemingly good or seemingly bad, is the primary definition of joy and the richest triumph for man under God.
Criss Jami
To the loyal and to the blood-lovers, in the good families and in the fiery dynasties, life is family and family is life. It is the same people who give advice and their vices to live well who turn out to be the ones who give resource and reason to live long.
Criss Jami
To be happy to be sad and sad to be happy is to sing an echo in that beautiful language called Sorrow.
Criss Jami
Speaking a painful truth should be done only in love - like wielding a sword with no hilt - it should pain oneself in direct proportion to the amount of force exerted.
Criss Jami
The problem is politics is made a sport, almost as much a sport as football or baseball. When it comes to politics, adults and politicians do more finger-pointing and play more games than children ever do. Too often are we rooting for the pride of a team rather than the good of the nation.
Criss Jami
Work was intended not to give a man a reason to live, but rather to give him a means to live.
Criss Jami
You might be an introvert if you were ready to go home before you left the house.
Criss Jami
Grudges are for those who insist that they are owed something; forgiveness, however, is for those who are substantial enough to move on.
Criss Jami
God is not some lesser employee, as many try to make Him out to be: rather He is the ultimate Treasure. He works in a man; He works on a man; He works through a man; He works around a man. Know that He does far more than simply work for a man. And yet, even as He Himself needs no one else, everyone else is ever in need of Him.
Criss Jami
The weather is nature's disruptor of human plans and busybodies. Of all the things on earth, nature's disruption is what we know we can depend on, as it is essentially uncontrolled by men.
Criss Jami
If a man cannot understand the beauty of life, it is probably because life never understood the beauty in him.
Criss Jami
Time and time over it is the ones who try a little too hard to be innovative rebels - and for the sheer glory of being considered innovative rebels - who then turn out not quite as innovative or as rebellious as they would like to think they are.
Criss Jami
The unteachable man is sentenced to being taught only by experience. The tragedy is he reaches nothing further than his own pain.
Criss Jami
The unteachable man is sentenced to being taught only by experience. The tragedy is he reaches nothing further than his own pain.
Criss Jami
Every new generation believes its own period to be absolutely superior intellectually - greater than all past cultures yet equal among its modern cultures.
Criss Jami
Be careful not to appear obsessively intellectual. When intelligence fills up, it overflows a parody.
Criss Jami
Knowing the truth is so minuscule compared to having the nerve to say it...and even more to live it.
Criss Jami
There is this common notion that people are shallow and ignorant until they go out and see the world. I, on the other hand, went out and in comparison realized I was in pretty good standing.
Criss Jami
The internet is where some people go to show their true intelligence; others, their hidden stupidity.
Criss Jami
Any halfway clever devil would decorate the highway to Hell as beautiful as possible.
Criss Jami
I like solitude. It is when you truly hear and speak your natural, unadulterated mind, and out comes your most stupid self as well as your most intelligent self. It is when you realize who you are and the extents of the good and the evils which you are capable of.
Criss Jami
The sacrifices we make to stay healthy, to look good, the tasty foods we skip, the guilt trips, the exercising - all these things require great discipline, care, and even a paradoxical, self-denying self-love of sorts in order to be properly executed. However it is regretful that so many of us today are not as passionate about our spiritual holiness as we are about our physical health. They are indeed both important - we should worship in every aspect of our lives - and one even, in a sense, entails the other. Although, this disproportion in said priorities is still very much expected: we humans have always taken a liking to trendiness and the temporal side of things, doing what is judged vainly in the eyes of man before that which is judged vitally and eternally in the eyes of God (i.e. "cleaning the outside of one's cup while leaving a filthy inside"). But in a way, it all goes to show that the man who fully hates discipline hates himself fully; for within the spirit is where The Holy One judges true wellness or malady.
Criss Jami
There are those who feel that the world is ultimately moving closer to Truth and to prosperity as the times evolve; then there are those who feel that it is ultimately moving farther away from Truth and into self-destruction. From this, and if it were really that simplistic, one might get the impression that life gravitates slightly into two types of people whom which are diametrically opposed in spirit.
Criss Jami
It is by continuing to put out good work that the artist best shows his gratitude.
Criss Jami
I'm a peasantI'm the muzhikA pest you're destined to play the musicAnd yes it's pleasant to say it's beauty I'mIndebted to rest respecting it truly
Criss Jami
A sign of power in a man is not only when people follow what he suggests, but also when people make a conscious effort to do the exact opposite of what he suggests.
Criss Jami
...There are also those who inadvertently grant power to another man's words by continuously trying to spite him. If a man gets to the point where he can simply say, 'The sky is blue,' and people indignantly rush up trying to refute him saying, 'No, the sky is light blue,' then, whether they realize it or not, he has become an authority figure even to such adversaries.
Criss Jami
If I were to believe in God enough to call him a murderer, then I might also believe enough that he, as a spirit, exists beyond death; and therefore only he could do it righteously. For the physical being kills a man and hatefully sends him away, whereas God, the spiritual being, kills a man and lovingly draws him nigh.
Criss Jami
Like most arts, the link between the mind and the pen can chain you like an enslaved workaholic. Even on an intended vacation you suddenly have this killer urge to record whatever the vacation may teach.
Criss Jami
Growing up I sometimes imagined that for Christ's return perhaps He would appear as 'Black Jesus' to white people and 'White Jesus' to black people just to screw with the racists.
Criss Jami
All individuals have moral deficiencies, and when introducing these to reality one not only strengthens himself but also the confidence of others in the human exigency for Christ due to a reflection throughout the body of Christ.
Criss Jami
For the believer, humility is honesty about one's greatest flaws to a degree in which he is fearless about truly appearing less righteous than another.
Criss Jami
Together, we form a necessary paradox; not a senseless contradiction.
Criss Jami
Perhaps not everything happens for a reason. That is, until you make it so; because for everything there is a season, which can, in fact, become beautiful.
Criss Jami
I am not convinced within myself that to its core and as a whole, humanity has, as some like to assume, progressed a great deal over the millennia. Human technology? Of course. Human beings? Hardly.
Criss Jami
Christ died not so that you could freely go on sinning, and therefore, continue dying; He died rather so that you could freely grow in obedience, and therefore, start living.
Criss Jami
Humility is by far the most spiritual virtue of the lot. The only way by which one may cease obsessing over himself is to wholly step outside his flesh. But who could do this by himself? And who would really want to under his natural pretense? And even if somehow he could and he succeeded, would not it be artificial? Would not he seem far too aware of his own talents of achieving humility for it to be such? Alternatively, he would need a distraction, something else to love; it is not that the Humbleman thinks poorly of himself, nor highly for that matter, but rather he does not think of himself at all - and this is because he is too busy loving something or someone else to do it. For the humility of this kind 'rears its head' as the most love-driven and free, spiritual of virtues; whereas its opposite, pride, the most self-imprisoning human vice.
Criss Jami
When you meet someone, and you find that they are prejudiced against your kind, it might be your chance, not to confirm, but to be the one to finally change their mind.
Criss Jami
Thunderstorms are as much our friends as the sunshine.
Criss Jami
Man was created to glorify God. Now, that may encompass other things which God has planned for each man, but essentially, man was created to glorify God.
Criss Jami
To ask, 'How do you do it?' is already starting off on the wrong foot. When reaching for the stars, there does not have to be a 'how' if there is a big enough 'why'.
Criss Jami
Whenever we want to combat our enemies, first and foremost we must start by understanding them rather than exaggerating their motives.
Criss Jami
I often find that people confuse inner peace with some sense of insensibility whenever something goes wrong. In such cases inner peace is a permit for destruction: The unyielding optimist will pretend that the forest is not burning either because he is too lazy or too afraid to go and put the fire out.
Criss Jami
In my experiences, the common critic of Christianity, when he thinks of Christianity, imagines a sort of elementary, Sunday School blunder of elements: fiery Hell, an angry God, 'try not to sin', 'be good so that you can go to Heaven', absurd miracles, hyper-fundamentalist tales, religious hypocrites, and Jesus telling people not to judge. There is no horse more dead than such. I maintain that understanding Christianity and the Bible is quite like painting a piece of art. Let a toddler paint a puppy; then let an adult who is a long-time painter paint the very same puppy. They are both paintings of the puppy, but one is far more detailed, rational, realistic, and believable than the other. One is distorted and comical; the other is proportional and lively. One can write off Theology if he so pleases, but he might not be very wise in using the toddler's painting when it comes time to identify the real puppy or when trying to confront actual men of the Faith.
Criss Jami