Criss Jami Quotes - Page 3

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
It turns out that the men who ultimately, who unpretentiously value peace are willing to sacrifice their own peace of mind in order to render it. The question is, 'Who, between opposing forces, would do such a thing?' It seems only theoretical albeit true that men who accept an objective rather than subjective moral standard are, in a general sense, more capable of making such sacrifices for the sake of peace.
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
Man is not, by nature, deserving of all that he wants. When we think that we are automatically entitled to something, that is when we start walking all over others to get it.
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
A number of our scientists boast intelligence but lack wisdom. I find those to be the predictable ones.
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 role of genius is not to complicate the simple, but to simplify the complicated.
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
In the heart of appeasement there's the fear of rejection, and in acts of fear there are mirrors of oppression.
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
Initially, the God of the Old Testament might seem overwhelming and domineering to you, or tyrannical, or perhaps even evil, which is good. It is the first telling that God is indeed God, by sheer definition, and not some ear-tickling fairy by which one in his depravity is guaranteed to find another form of stale romanticism or love at first sight. For such a first impression as the latter would be problematic to the essence of Christianity. Therefore the Christians are right in saying that the nature of imperfect men cannot ultimately co-exist with the nature of a perfect God; and that the hope of each man is now desperately found in God's sending of Christ.
Criss Jami
We are not as some people like to assume nowadays 'just being real' by embracing passively the sinful, fallen versions of ourselves. Quite the opposite really: our true selves were, from the beginning, intended to resemble the example which was then set by Christ Jesus; hence God wants to restore us to how we would have been had original sin never once befell.
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
If beauty is relative, then any and everything when compared to the beauty of God is absolutely hideous.
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
God knew man would evolve. People think some of the Old Testament laws are absurd now because we live in a very different culture, a different time period. They had their problems and we have ours. God is constant but man is not, and he foreknew the ever-changing world his people would have to deal with; therefore, and if there is indeed an omniscient God, a Christ-like figure would be our only rational, possible connection to a constant, holy God throughout the evolution of culture and social law. The only answer that makes sense when it comes to relevance regarding religions and time periods is Christ, and the chances are slim that men could have invented it.
Criss Jami
Love may be harder to find in some people, but when they do love you know it must be something marvelous.
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
The Christian who loves his Master needs not fear any longer for himself. For it is then completely irrational, as it is written thus: 'Perfect love casts out fear.' However, it is very much rational for one to instead fear for the enemies of God.
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
The only activity a cynic will find contagious is yawning, that is, with other people, at other people.
Criss Jami
The logic behind patriotism is a mystery. At least a man who believes that his own family or clan is superior to all others is familiar with more than 0.000003% of the people involved.
Criss Jami
Psychobabble attempts to redefine the entire English language just to make a correct statement incorrect. Psychology is the study of why someone would try to do this.
Criss Jami
I feel as though whenever I create something, my Mr. Hyde wakes up in the middle of the night and starts thrashing it. I sometimes love it the next morning, but other times it is an abomination.
Criss Jami
For God to prove himself on demand, physically, would be a grave disappointment, and the strongest Christians should be considerably grateful that he chooses not to do so. The skeptic endlessly demands proof, yet God refuses to insult the true intelligence of man, the '6th sense', the chief quality, the acumen which distinguishes man from the rest of creation, faith.
Criss Jami
The only activity a cynic will find contagious is yawning, that is, with other people, at other people.
Criss Jami
The logic behind patriotism is a mystery. At least a man who believes that his own family or clan is superior to all others is familiar with more than 0.000003% of the people involved.
Criss Jami
Psychobabble attempts to redefine the entire English language just to make a correct statement incorrect. Psychology is the study of why someone would try to do this.
Criss Jami