Quotes by Theologians - Page 14

In the country of the blind the one-eyed man is king.
Erasmus
The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.
Tertullian
One anecdote of a man is worth a volume of biography.
William Ellery Channing
How doth the little busy bee Improve each shining hour And gather honey all the day From every opening flower.
Isaac Watts
What can you conceive more silly and extravagant than to suppose a man racking his brains and studying night and day how to fly?
William Law
Artistic temperament is a disease that afflicts amateurs.
G.K. Chesterton
Never argue at the dinner table for the one who is not hungry always gets the best of the argument.
Richard Whately
Music is the art of the prophets the only art that can calm the agitations of the soul it is one of the most magnificent and delightful presents God has given us.
Martin Luther
The best most beautiful and most perfect way that we have of expressing a sweet concord of mind to each other is by music.
Jonathan Edwards
Neurosis is the way of avoiding non-being by avoiding being.
Paul Tillich
Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.
Søren Kierkegaard
Fear not that thy life shall come to an end but rather that it shall never have a beginning.
John Henry Cardinal Newman
Victory over fear is the first spiritual duty of man.
Nicholas Berdyaev
Men often make up in wrath what they want in reason.
W. R. Alger
I never work better than when I am inspired by anger for when I am angry I can write pray and preach well for then my whole temperament is quickened my understanding sharpened and all mundane vexations and temptations depart.
Martin Luther
There is nothing the matter with Americans except their ideals. The real American is all right it is the ideal American who is all wrong.
G.K. Chesterton
When asked by an anthropologist what the Indians called America before the white man came an Indian said simply 'Ours.'
Vine Deloria
As the world is wearie of me so am I of it.
John Knox
Thanksgiving comes after Christmas.
Peter Kreeft
Never does a man know the force that is in him till some mighty affection or grief has humanized the soul.
Frederick W. Robertson
Difficulties are meant to rouse not discourage. The human spirit is to grow strong by conflict.
William Ellery Channing
Great occasions do not make heroes or cowards they simply unveil them to the eyes of men. Silently and imperceptibly as we wake or sleep we grow strong or weak and at last some crisis shows what we have become.
Brooke Foss Westcott
The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
Martin Luther King
When Adam dolve and Eve span Who was then the gentleman?
John Ball
There are two kinds of people: those who say to God "Thy will be done " and those to whom God says "All right then have it your way."
C.S. Lewis
On earth we have nothing to do with success or results but only with being true to God and for God. Defeat in doing right is nevertheless victory.
Frederick W. Robertson
Learn to do thy part and leave the rest to Heaven.
John Henry Cardinal Newman
Let us act on what we have since we have not what we wish.
Cardinal Newman
Acceptance is the truest kinship with humanity.
G.K. Chesterton
Anyone who proposes to do good must not expect people to roll stones out of his way but must accept his lot calmly even if they roll a few more upon it.
Albert Schweitzer
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.
Reinhold Niebuhr
We must accept finite disappointment but we must never lose infinite hope.
Martin Luther King
What we do upon some great occasion will probably depend on what we already are: and what we are will be the result of previous years of self-discipline.
H. P. Liddon
My own understanding is similar to that of scholar of religion and pastor Howard Thurman. I find a profound teaching in Thurman's saying that "what is true in any religion is in the religion because it is true; it is not true because it is in the religion." Thurman's saying is true for Christian theology. If there is truth in a theology, then it is present simply because it is true, not because it is in the theology. Whether or not we can find truth in a school of thought or particular theological construction is most important, not the school of thought or particular theological construction. Therefore, I find events of truth to draw on from a diversity of theological writings, rather than locate my work in a particular school of thought. The truth we Christians seek, beyond all our words and all of our labels, is found through unity in diversity. It is the common ground we all long for. No one theology alone is capable of revealing this common ground. We require a diversity taken together, each with its distinctive gifts. Together, these various insights into Christian truth correct and inform one another. This is the gift of ecumenism.
Karen Baker-Fletcher
The question, he (Lincoln) said over and over, is not what a man's particular abilities may be, but what his rights are as a human being made in God's image.
Elton Trueblood
Daily there have to be many troubles and trials in every house, city, and country. No station in life is free of suffering and pain, both from your own, like your wife or children or household help or subjects, and from the outside, from your neighbors and all sorts of accidental trouble.
Martin Luther
If you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without every having noticed it.
C.S. Lewis
I do wish," said Lucy, "now that we're not thirsty, we could go on feeling as not-hungry as we did when we were thirsty.
C.S. Lewis
Let's pray that the human race never escapes Earth to spread its iniquity elsewhere.
C.S. Lewis
... "I now see that I spent most of my life in doing neither what I ought nor what I liked". The Christians describe the Enemy as one "without whom Nothing is strong". And Nothing is very strong: strong enough to steal away a man's best years not in sweet sins but in a dreary flickering of the mind over it knows not what and knows not why, in the gratification of curiosities so feeble that the man is only half aware of them ...
C.S. Lewis
We do not need to get good laws to restrain bad people. We need to get good people to restrain us from bad laws.
G.K. Chesterton
We do not admire, we hardly excuse, the fanatic who wrecks this world for love of the other. But what are we to say of the fanatic who wrecks this world out of hatred of the other? He sacrifices the very existence of humanity to the non-existence of God. He offers his victims not to the altar, but merely to assert the idleness of the altar and the emptiness of the throne. He is ready to ruin even that primary ethic by which all things live, for his strange and eternal vengeance upon some one who never lived at all.
G.K. Chesterton
There is a voice that doesn’t use words. Listen.
Jalaluddin Rumi
You use your real voice with those you love, and you cannot be phony with those who know you well.
Frederick Buechner
Angels need an assumed body, not for themselves, but on our account.
Thomas Aquinas
Every visible thing in this world is put in the charge of an Angel.
Augustine of Hippo
I'm a beast, I am, and a Badger what's more. We don't change. We hold on. I say great good will come of it. This is the true King of Narnia we've got here: a true King, coming back to true Narnia. And we beasts remember, even if Dwarfs forget, that Narnia was never right except when a son of Adam was King.
C.S. Lewis
Now it is time!" then louder, "Time!"; and then so loud it could have shaken the stars; "TIME." The door flew open.
C.S. Lewis
What an abundant harvest has been collected in autumn! The earth has now fulfilled its design for this year, and is going to repose for a short time. Thus nature is continually employed during the greatest part of the year: even in her rest she is active: and in silence prepares a new creation.
Christoph Christian Sturm
The present importance of the Book of Job cannot be expressed adequately even by saying that it is the most interesting of ancient books. We may almost say of the Book of Job that it is the most interesting of modern books. In truth, of course, neither of the two phrases covers the matter, because fundamental human religion and fundamental human irreligion are both at once old and new; philosophy is either eternal or it is not philosophy. The modern habit of saying, 'This is my opinion, but I may be wrong,' is entirely irrational. If I say that it may be wrong I say that is not my opinion. The modern habit of saying 'Every man has a different philosophy; this is my philosophy and its suits me'; the habit of saying this is mere weak-mindedness. A cosmic philosophy is not constructed to fit a man; a cosmic philosophy is constructed to fit a cosmos. A man can no more possess a private religion than he can possess a private sun and moon.
G.K. Chesterton
Now against the specialist, against the man who studies only art or electricity, or the violin, or the thumbscrew or what not, there is only one really important argument, and that, for some reason or other, is never offered. People say that specialists are inhuman; but that is unjust. People say an expert is not a man; but that is unkind and untrue. The real difficulty about the specialist or expert is much more singular and fascinating. The trouble with the expert is never that he is not a man; it is always that wherever he is not an expert he is too much of an ordinary man. Wherever he is not exceptionally learned he is quite casually ignorant. This is the great fallacy in the case of what is called the impartiality of men of science. If scientific men had no idea beyond their scientific work it might be all very well — that is to say, all very well for everybody except them. But the truth is that, beyond their scientific ideas, they have not the absence of ideas but the presence of the most vulgar and sentimental ideas that happen to be common to their social clique. If a biologist had no views on art and morals it might be all very well. The truth is that the biologist has all the wrong views of art and morals that happen to be going about in the smart set of his time.
G.K. Chesterton
My opinion is, of course, completely my own. I would not impose it on anyone else and decline any pressure to change it.
Søren Kierkegaard
Often we want to be somewhere other than where we are, to even to be someone other than who we are. We tend to compare ourselves constantly with others and wonder why we are not as rich, as intelligent, as simple, as generous, or as saintly as they are. Such comparisons make us feel guilty, ashamed, or jealous. It is very important to realize that our vocation is hidden in where we are and who we are. We are unique human beings, each with a call to realize in life what nobody else can, and to realize it in the concrete context of the here and now.We will never find our vocations by trying to figure out whether we are better or worse than others. We are good enough to do what we are called to do. Be yourself!
Henri J.M. Nouwen
If man--if each one of us--abdicates his responsibilities with regard to values; if each one of us limits himself to leading a trivial existence in a technological civilization, with greater adaptation and increasing success as his sole objectives; if we do not even consider the possibility of making a stand against these determinants, then everything will happen as I have described it, and the determinates will be transformed into inevitabilities.
Jacques Ellul
Free love may try to dissolve, and the concubinate to desecrate, the holiest tie, as it pleases; but, for the vast majority of our race, marriage remains the foundation of human society and the family retains its position as the primordial sphere in sociology.
Abraham Kuyper
We see the puppets dancing on their miniature stage, moving up and down as the strings pull them around, following the prescribed course of their various little parts. We learn to understand the logic of this theater and we find ourselves in its motions. We locate ourselves in society and thus recognize our own position as we hang from its subtle strings. For a moment we see ourselves as puppets indeed. But then we grasp a decisive difference between the puppet theater and our own drama. Unlike the puppets, we have the possibility of stopping in our movements, looking up and perceiving the machinery by which we have been moved. In this act lies the first step toward freedom. And in this same act we find the conclusive justification of sociology as a humanistic discipline
Peter Berger
When modern sociologists talk of the necessity of accommodating one's self to the trend of the time, they forget that the trend of the time at its best consists entirely of people who will not accommodate themselves to anything. At its worst it consists of many millions of frightened creatures all accommodating themselves to a trend that is not there. And that is becoming more and more the situation...Every man speaks of public opinion, and means by public opinion, public opinion minus his opinion.
G.K. Chesterton
The attempt to interpret human behavior in terms of models derived from the natural sciences eventually destroys personal responsibility.
Lesslie Newbigin
Good sociologists have always had an insatiable curiosity about about even the trivialities of human behaviour, and if this curiosity leads a sociologist to devote many years to the painstaking exploration of some small corner of the social world that may appear quite trivial to others, so be it: Why do more teenagers pick their noses in rural Minnesota than in rural Iowa? What are the patterns of church socials over a twenty-year period in small-town Saskatchewan? What is the correlation between religious affiliation and accident-proneness among elderly Hungarians?
Peter Berger
Scattered trees, never thick enough to be a forest, were everywhere. Shasta, who had lived all his life in an almost tree-less grassland, had never seen so many or so many kinds. If you had been there you would probably have known (he didn't) that he was seeing oaks, beeches, silver birches, rowans, and sweet chestnuts. Rabbits scurried away in every direction as they advanced, and presently they saw a whole herd of fallow deer making off among the trees.
C.S. Lewis