Quotes by Theologians - Page 95

I held my heart back from positively accepting anything, since I was afraid of another fall, and in this condition of suspense I was being all the more killed.
Augustine of Hippo
The ground's generosity takes in our compost and grows beauty! Try to be more like the ground.
Jalaluddin Rumi
At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.
Albert Schweitzer
In my deepest wound I saw your glory, and it dazzled me.
Augustine of Hippo
Do not waste time bothering whether you ‘love’ your neighbor; act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him.
C.S. Lewis
Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery it is. In the boredom and pain of it, no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it, because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.
Frederick Buechner
The terrible thing, the almost impossible thing, is to hand over your whole self--all your wishes and precautions--to Christ. But it is far easier than what we are all trying to do instead. For what we are trying to do is to remain what we call "ourselves," to keep personal happiness as our great aim in life, and yet at the same time be "good.
C.S. Lewis
We have all forgotten what we really are. All that we call common sense and rationality and practicality and positivism only means that for certain dead levels of our life we forget that we have forgotten. All that we call spirit and art and ecstasy only means that for one awful instant we remember that we forget.
G.K. Chesterton
Death is nothing at all. It does not count. I have only slipped away into the next room. Nothing has happened. Everything remains exactly as it was. I am I, and you are you, and the old life that we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged. Whatever we were to each other, that we are still. Call me by the old familiar name. Speak of me in the easy way which you always used. Put no difference into your tone. Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow. Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes that we enjoyed together. Play, smile, think of me, pray for me. Let my name be ever the household word that it always was. Let it be spoken without an effort, without the ghost of a shadow upon it. Life means all that it ever meant. It is the same as it ever was. There is absolute and unbroken continuity. What is this death but a negligible accident? Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight? I am but waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere very near, just round the corner. All is well. Nothing is hurt; nothing is lost. One brief moment and all will be as it was before. How we shall laugh at the trouble of parting when we meet again!
Henry Scott Holland
Understanding is the reward of faith. Therefore, seek not to understand that you may believe, but believe that you may understand.
Augustine of Hippo
The summit of happiness is reached when a person is ready to be what he is.
Erasmus
You know me better than you think, you know, and you shall know me better yet.
C.S. Lewis
The atheist staring from his attic window is often nearer to God than the believer caught up in his own false image of God.
Martin Buber
You have forgotten the Onewho doesn't care about ownership,who doesn't try to turn a profitfrom every human exchange.
Jalaluddin Rumi
Onward and Upward! To Narnia and the North!
C.S. Lewis
Spirituality is not to be learned by flight from the world, or by running away from things, or by turning solitary and going apart from the world. Rather, we must learn an inner solitude wherever or with whomsoever we may be. We must learn to penetrate things and find God there.
Meister Eckhart
It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which,if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree helping each other to one or the other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all of our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. 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.
C.S. Lewis
Aslan: You doubt your value. Don't run from who you are.
C.S. Lewis
There is a road from the eye to the heart that does not go through the intellect.
G.K. Chesterton
You think of yourselfas a citizen of the universe.You think you belong to this world of dust and matter.Out of this dustyou have created a personal image,and have forgottenabout the essence of your true origin
Jalaluddin Rumi
We are what we believe we are!
C.S. Lewis
Miracles do not, in fact, break the laws of nature.
C.S. Lewis
Give your weakness to one who helps.
Jalaluddin Rumi
When things go wrong, you'll find they usually go on getting worse for some time; but when things once start going right they often go on getting better and better.
C.S. Lewis
Action springs not from thought, but from a readiness for responsibility.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
The truth was a mirror in the hands of God. It fell, and broke into pieces. Everybody took a piece of it, and they looked at it and thought they had the truth.
Jalaluddin Rumi
No great wisdom can be reached without sacrifice.
C.S. Lewis
Everything that is done in this world is done by hope.
Martin Luther
Wrong will be right, when Aslan comes in sight,At the sound of his roar, sorrows will be no more,When he bares his teeth, winter meets its death,And when he shakes his mane, we shall have spring again.
C.S. Lewis
A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.
G.K. Chesterton
Do not dare not to dare.
C.S. Lewis
In our world," said Eustace, "a star is a huge ball of flaming gas."Even in your world, my son, that is not what a star is, but only what it is made of.
C.S. Lewis
My heart, which is so full to overflowing, has often been solaced and refreshed by music when sick and weary.
Martin Luther
The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.
Frederick Buechner
Give up to grace. The ocean takes care of each wave 'til it gets to shore. You need more help than you know.
Jalaluddin Rumi
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
Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder. Help someone's soul heal. Walk out of your house like a shepherd.
Jalaluddin Rumi
Do you know what you are?You are a manuscript oƒ a divine letter.You are a mirror reflecting a noble face. This universe is not outside of you. Look inside yourself;everything that you want, you are already that.
Jalaluddin Rumi
Self-respect is the root of discipline: The sense of dignity growswith the ability to say no to oneself.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.
Theodore Parker
What you are is God's gift to you, what you become is your gift to God.
Hans Urs von Balthasar
I didn't come here of my own accord, and I can't leave that way.Whoever brought me here will have to take me home.
Jalaluddin Rumi
Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.
Albert Schweitzer
An eye is meant to see things.The soul is here for its own joy.A head has one use: For loving a true love.Feet: To chase after.Love is for vanishing into the sky. The mind,for learning what men have done and tried to do.Mysteries are not to be solved: The eye goes blindwhen it only wants to see why.A lover is always accused of something.But when he finds his love, whatever was lostin the looking comes back completely changed.
Jalaluddin Rumi
You come of the Lord Adam and the Lady Eve," said Aslan. "And that is both honour enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar, and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the greatest emperor on earth. Be content.
C.S. Lewis
It [feminism] is mixed up with a muddled idea that women are free when they serve their employers but slaves when they help their husbands.
G.K. Chesterton
We are saved by faith alone, but the faith that saves is never alone.
Martin Luther
Start a huge, foolish project, like Noah…it makes absolutely no difference what people think of you.
Jalaluddin Rumi
In friendship...we think we have chosen our peers. In reality a few years' difference in the dates of our births, a few more miles between certain houses, the choice of one university instead of another...the accident of a topic being raised or not raised at a first meeting--any of these chances might have kept us apart. But, for a Christian, there are, strictly speaking no chances. A secret master of ceremonies has been at work. Christ, who said to the disciples, "Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you," can truly say to every group of Christian friends, "Ye have not chosen one another but I have chosen you for one another." The friendship is not a reward for our discriminating and good taste in finding one another out. It is the instrument by which God reveals to each of us the beauties of others.
C.S. Lewis
I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now...Come further up, come further in!
C.S. Lewis
Be melting snow.Wash yourself of yourself.
Jalaluddin Rumi
Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.
Howard Thurman
Do all the good you can. By all the means you can. In all the ways you can. In all the places you can. At all the times you can. To all the people you can. As long as ever you can.
John Wesley
Be like the sun for grace and mercy. Be like the night to cover others' faults. Be like running water for generosity. Be like death for rage and anger. Be like the Earth for modesty. Appear as you are. Be as you appear.
Jalaluddin Rumi
And out of that hopeless attempt has come nearly all that we call human history—money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery—the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.
C.S. Lewis
We come spinning out of nothingness, scattering stars like dust.
Jalaluddin Rumi
We meet no ordinary people in our lives.
C.S. Lewis
Be empty of worrying.Think of who created thought!Why do you stay in prisonWhen the door is so wide open?
Jalaluddin Rumi
There is the great lesson of 'Beauty and the Beast,' that a thing must be loved before it is lovable.
G.K. Chesterton
God allows us to experience the low points of life in order to teach us lessons that we could learn in no other way.
C.S. Lewis