We are not built for the mountains and the dawns and aesthetic affinities, those are for moments of inspiration, that is all. We are built for the valley, for the ordinary stuff we are in, and that is where we have to prove our mettle. Spiritual selfishness always wants repeated moments on the mount. We feel we could talk like angels and live like angels, if only we could stay on the mount. The times of exaltation are exceptional, they have their meaning in our life with God, but we must beware lest our spiritual selfishness wants to make them the only time.
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If you have had no tension in your life, never been screwed up by problems, your mortality well within your own grasp, and someone tells you that God so loved you that He gave His Son to die for you, nothing but good manners will keep you from being amused.
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This is our purpose: to make as meaningful as possible this life that has been bestowed upon us; to live in such a way that we may be proud of ourselves; to act in such a way that some part of us lives on.
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The remarkable thing about fearing God is that when you fear God you fear nothing else, whereas if you do not fear God you fear everything else.
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We are in danger of forgetting that we cannot do what God does, and that God will not do what we can do.
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There are periods in history when change is necessary, and other periods when it is better to keep everything for the time as it is. The art of life is to be in the rhythm of your age.
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We presume that we would be ready for battle if confronted with a great crisis, but it is not the crisis that builds something within us—it simply reveals what we are made of already.
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The figure of the gunman in the window was inextricable from the victim and his history. This sustained Oswald in his cell. It gave him what he needed to live. The more time he spent in a cell, the stronger he would get. Everybody knew who he was now.
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The press today is an army with carefully organized weapons, the journalists its officers, the readers its soldiers. But, as in every army, the soldier obeys blindly, and the war aims and operating plans change without his knowledge. The reader neither knows nor is supposed to know the purposes for which he is used and the role he is to play. There is no more appalling caricature of freedom of thought. Formerly no one was allowed to think freely; now it is permitted, but no one is capable of it any more. Now people want to think only what they are supposed to want to think, and this they consider freedom.
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Holiness, not happiness, is the chief end of man.
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Great men of action ... never mind on occasion being ridiculous in a sense it is part of their job, and at times they all are. A prophet or an achiever must never mind an occasional absurdity, it is an occupational risk.
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When it is a question of God's almighty Spirit, never say, I can't.
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Never let the sense of past failure defeat your next step.
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Earnestness is not by any means everything; it is very often a subtle form of pious pride because it is obsessed with the method and not with the Master.
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This is our purpose to make as meaningful as possible this life that has been bestowed upon us to live in such a way that we may be proud of ourselves to act in such a way that some part of us lives on.
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Socialism is nothing but the capitalism of the lower classes.
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Socialism is nothing but the capitalism of the lower classes
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When you fall, pick something up.
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Whenever you fall, pick something up.
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Student: 'Can you do problem number twelve?' Wyler: Twelve?...NO!...That problem is on the test.
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Whenever you fall, pick up something
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