Criss Jami Quotes - Page 6

Rebuke without love is abuse. But, a love that would never rebuke? I dare to admit that that, too, would be a kind of abuse.
Criss Jami
A rebel adult often seems like a glorious savior, whereas a rebel child often seems like a little devil.
Criss Jami
Many of us fight for and boast our freedom of what is ultimately the ability to prove ourselves to other people. It is unfortunate that only a few of us are so free in our joy, we no longer feel the need to prove ourselves to anyone.
Criss Jami
I won't be stuck in traffic 'til I see how rugged my path isAnd right now I'm loving how fast my troubles are fastingNo they don't bother me oh realizing I'm psychopathicA wild beast, baby I'm gladly running afterYes a thing called peace outlasting any madnessThe devil fears me oh he's feelingLike a fragment of a fractionNo he won't come near me'Cause his hat trick's out of practice
Criss Jami
Fresh, solid ideas feel like gifts to writers, therefore every morning is Christmas.
Criss Jami
As a poet there is something about joy I find hard to express, whereas every other emotion is rather simple. For instance, you never feel so bad that you can't describe how bad you feel, but joy on the other hand is far too divine for human language.
Criss Jami
I am often guilty of expecting the worst so as to avoid disappointment and welcome surprise.
Criss Jami
God loves each person, I believe; although, just like we do in our private homes, He reserves His kingdom only for those whom He enjoys.
Criss Jami
Those small moments of pleasure men get from sin, from defying God, are perhaps grace - His final gift still to those who hard-heartedly choose to deny Him. Godless men may blatantly enjoy offending God not because they are free-spirited, but on the whole because He moves them to enjoy it. Sin is, in a sense, still touching God: for a strike involves a touch. Perhaps this is His divine kindness. Faithful men find everlasting fulfillment in His good company; but godless men who strike at the Author of Joy, who are completely ignorant of the greater, for them - and by God's love for His enemies - there is yet this small recoil known as 'pleasure' before the fall.
Criss Jami
After each of his books, the writer, for a while, feels once again that he can now die happy.
Criss Jami
You maintain hope for humanity as an infinite skeptic of gossip and slander. In all mankind's desires for entertainment and exaggeration and sensationalism, when it comes to gossip, the individual always sounds worse than he really is. This is why adhering to gossip subtly affects the mental state of the listener - he goes on holding shady opinions regardless of where the realities of their lights and darknesses may stand.
Criss Jami
The trouble with poetry is it's often written to the sound of a drum only the poet may hear; nonetheless, blessed are those poets who always manage to find unshakeable pleasure in their own works.
Criss Jami
People debate over whether or not there is a literal Hell, in the literal sense often described as fire and eternal torture, which, to many, seems to be too harsh a punishment. If men really want to fear something, they should be fearing separation from God, the supposedly more comforting alternative to a literal Hell. For separation from the authorship of love, mercy, and goodness is the ultimate torture. If you think a literal Hell sounds too bad, you are very much underestimating the pain of being absolutely, wholly separated from the goodness while exposed to the reality of the holiness of God.
Criss Jami
The hope is indeed that some will experience and believe: The purpose of a number of spiritual gurus is to demonstrate to God-fearing men faux spirituality.
Criss Jami
It is a harsh reality that some of the most important and respectable jobs which deserve high salaries might be better off with low salaries. A politician, or a minister, or a teacher is sure to be working sincerely and selflessly for the good of the people when through and through there is little monetary reward guaranteed. This is how the charlatans are weeded out of the field.
Criss Jami
Reality. It is sometimes brought through foreign eyes; because if you do not know any better, you cannot see the worse (and vice versa).
Criss Jami
Quiet people always know more than they seem. Although very normal, their inner world is by default fronted mysterious and therefore assumed weird. Never underestimate the social awareness and sense of reality in a quiet person; they are some of the most observant, absorbent persons of all.
Criss Jami
The hype cheapens the hyped, as right things are then made wrong by exaggeration.
Criss Jami
...And maybe one day you will wake up as an infant in a completely different universe, and your entire life thus far was just one big dream.
Criss Jami
A utopian system, when established by men, is likely to be synonymous with a dystopian depression. The only way for perfect peace by man is absolute control of all wrongs. Bully-cultures find this: with each and every mistake, another village idiot is shamed into nothingness and mindlessly shut down by the herd. This is a superficial peace made by force and by fear, one in which there is no freedom to breathe; and the reason it is impossible for man to maintain freedom and peace for everyone at the same time. Christ, on the other hand, transforms, instead of controls, by instilling his certain inner peace. This is the place where one realizes that only his holiness is and feels like true freedom, rather than like imprisonment, and, too, why Hell, I imagine, a magnified version of man's never-ending conflict between freedom and peace, would be the flesh's ultimate utopia - yet its ultimate regret.
Criss Jami
Oftentimes in reality, the genius is in the position of the antihero. Neither the good guys nor the bad guys really trust him because his truth is universal.
Criss Jami
If you want to find the real competition, just look in the mirror. After awhile you'll see your rivals scrambling for second place.
Criss Jami
In the modern Christian attempt to take a stand as Christ did, and maybe for others, win the approval of the world, the Christian will often think that it consists of targeting and demoralizing fellow Christians and only fellow Christians. It is one thing to stand against religious hypocrisy when one sees it, but it is another to go on snorting at anything or anyone who might seem 'too Christian' to us. The irony is that by doing this we are further advocating hypocrisy and 'half-hearted Christians'.
Criss Jami
Men seek a great deal, but fatally close, albeit very different, is one's pride in proving oneself right with one's zeal for finding the truth.
Criss Jami
Music is not my life. My life is music.
Criss Jami
It might come a time to not follow your passion, so to speak, although it must be prioritized. It may be the case that your passion will serve as the medic, your peace of mind, alongside a higher calling, with your higher calling being the point man.
Criss Jami
God is not a God of confusion, although at times one's judgment, for a period, may become clouded in the mi(d)st of one's growth process. I stopped fooling myself into thinking that Christ is always for the cool kids and never for those upright and uptight religious people everybody hates.
Criss Jami
I do not believe it possible for one to genuinely love Truth more than people (or vice versa). One might fall into the snare of loving the search more than people, or the pride of having exposed something or someone, but not the truth itself. For if you love Truth you love people; because to love people at all and without illusion, you must also love the truth about them.
Criss Jami
The greater ignorance towards a country is not ignoring what its politicians have to say, it is ignoring what the inmates in its prisons have to say.
Criss Jami
Frequent risk-takers have had their fair shares of failures and successes, hence, being confident in reaching their goals, they will usually seem insensitive to whether or not they look foolish or cool to other people.
Criss Jami
Dreams and freedom are the same. In order for them to be, they come with a price.
Criss Jami
Your love is as stable as you are: It's not about how good a person makes you feel, but rather what good you can do for them.
Criss Jami
Growing up, I always had a soldier mentality. As a kid I wanted to be a soldier, a fighter pilot, a covert agent, professions that require a great deal of bravery and risk and putting oneself in grave danger in order to complete the mission. Even though I did not become all those things, and unless my predisposition, in its youngest years, already had me leaning towards them, the interest that was there still shaped my philosophies. To this day I honor risk and sacrifice for the good of others - my views on life and love are heavily influenced by this.
Criss Jami
A true prophet would rather be believed false by many but actually true than believed true by many but actually false.
Criss Jami
The real test of love is loving those who we feel are the hardest ones to love.
Criss Jami
A lack of common sense usually ends in some heroic feat, much like the soldier who dives onto the grenade so that others may live.
Criss Jami
If ever you feel like an animal among men, be a lion.
Criss Jami
Everyone pretends to be 'free thinkers', but few individuals pass the line into expressive territories that may be detrimental to their own social well-being.
Criss Jami
If you build the guts to do something, anything, then you better save enough to face the consequences.
Criss Jami
The sea in all its vastness is its own, real world. Man is nature's sci-fi.
Criss Jami
The last thing Scripture should do is make you blind in the world. Instead, you hear everything, see everything, and feel everything because everything just so happens to point right back to it.
Criss Jami
During the flames of controversy, opinions, mass disputes, conflict, and world news, sometimes the most precious, refreshing, peaceful words to hear amidst all the chaos are simply and humbly 'I don't know.
Criss Jami
Fame is an island, and right before the castaway, the getaway of being known without being known.
Criss Jami
The evangelist is the world's hopeless romantic, and just like a hopeless romantic, he must hope for the miracle of God more than the romance itself.
Criss Jami
False humility is quite like the worst of both worlds: both that of Meekness and that of Conceit.
Criss Jami
Keep your finger on the pulse of society, take controversies with a grain of salt, lick your finger and then lift it to the wind; always know what is going on, my friend, so this world can never steer you wrong again.
Criss Jami
Labeled fools to the world are geniuses to the cosmos.
Criss Jami
I would rather have strong enemies than a world of passive individualists. In a world of passive individualists nothing seems worth anything simply because nobody stands for anything. That world has no convictions, no victories, no unions, no heroism, no absolutes, no heartbeat. That world has rigor mortis.
Criss Jami
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
Knowledge is power, as some say. But on some days it is just as much pain and confusion as it is power; and any wise man worth his salt as a wise man at least understands this. One may be able to comprehend all the human perspectives in the universe, but this gives more to decipher regarding what is actually true; and even after discovering the truth, the challenge is in maintaining a patience for the infinite number of opinions that do not reflect that truth. Its consistency in man is challenge. A worldly knowledge ends at the former challenge of confusion, but the knowledge of Christ ends at the latter challenge of patience.
Criss Jami
Competition works best in sports, but humans get addicted to stuff.
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
This is almost always the case: A piece of art receives its f(r)ame when found offensive.
Criss Jami
Power without compassion is like a giant that blocks the sunlight.
Criss Jami
If only we were all better educated. If then, higher education would at last be a journey for skill and knowledge rather than for power and status.
Criss Jami
Where God is like the sun, the Devil is like a raindrop. There is no 'God vs. Satan' because they aren't even that close in power and authority. The former is very patient; the latter is at mercy.
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
To seek greatness is the only righteous vengeance.
Criss Jami