Unsorted Quotes, Devotional Bits, "Good 'uns," and Beloved Bible Passages
I really, really, really will get these organized someday!!
1. We should mind humiliation less if we were humbler. (CS Lewis)
2. Every day brings a chance for you to draw in a breath, kick off your shoes, and dance. (Oprah Winfrey)
3. A ship in port is safe, but that's not what ships are built for. (Grace Murray Hopper)
4. Perfect humility dispenses with modesty. (CS Lewis)
5. I can think of nothing less pleasurable than a life devoted to pleasure. (John D. Rockefeller)
6. There is no good in trying to be more spiritual than God. God never meant man to be a purely spiritual creature. That is why he used material things like bread and wine to put new life into us. We may think this rather crude and unspiritual. God does not: He invented eating. He likes matter. He invented it. (CS Lewis)
7. You are young, my son, and, as the years go by, time will change and even reverse many of your present opinions. Refrain therefore awhile from setting yourself up as a judge of the highest matters. (Plato)
8. Be wary of false preachers who smile a lot, dripping with practiced sincerity. Chances are they are out to rip you off some way or other. Don't be impressed with charisma; look for character. (Matthew 7:15)
9. We can never know that a piece of writing is bad unless we have begun by trying to read it as if it were very good and ended by discovering that we were paying the author an undeserved compliment. (CS Lewis)
10. It's a shallow life that doesn't give a person a few scars. (Garrison Keillor)
11. In prayer there is a connection between what God does and what you do. You can't get forgiveness from God, for instance, without also forgiving others. If you refuse to do your part, you cut yourself off from God's part. (Matthew 6:14-15 MSG)
12. Your eyes are windows into your body. If you open your eyes wide in wonder and belief, your body fills up with light. 23 If you live squinty-eyed in greed and distrust, your body is a dank cellar. If you pull the blinds on your windows, what a dark life you will have! (Matthew 6:22 MSG)
13. Be especially careful when you are trying to be good so that you don't make a performance out of it. It might be good theater, but the God who made you won't be applauding. (Matthew 6:1 MSG)
14. It is better to wear out than to rust out. (Bishop Richard Cumberland)
15. Perhaps in the soul, as in the soil, those growths that show the brightest colours and put forth the most overpowering smell have not always the deepest root. (CS Lewis)
16. But the great thing to remember is that, though our feelings come and go, His love for us does not. It is not wearied by our sins, or our indifference; and, therefore, it is quite relentless in its determination that we shall be cured of those sins, at whatever cost to us, at whatever cost to Him. (CS Lewis)
17. God touched Jacob's strength (the thigh muscle is the strongest in the body) and turned it into weakness. From that day forward, Jacob walked with a limp so he could never run away again.
If you want God to bless you and use you greatly, you must be willing to walk with a limp the rest of your life, because God uses weak people. (Rick Warren)
18. Christians, like snowflakes, are frail, but when they stick together they can stop traffic. (Vance Havner)
19. God has never been impressed with strength or self-sufficiency. In fact, he is drawn to people who are weak and admit it. (Rick Warren)
20. The only really happy people are those who have learned how to serve. (Albert Schweitzer)
21. In order to be of service to others we have to die to them; that is, we have to give up measuring our meaning and value with the yardstick of others..... Thus we become free to be compassionate. (Henri Nouwen)
22. And if someone takes unfair advantage of you, use the occasion to practice the servant life. (Matt. 5:41 MSG)
23. 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 you ever can. (John Wesley)
24. Habit is habit and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed downstairs a step at a time. (Mark Twain)
25. If my life is fruitless, it doesn't matter who praises me, and if my life is fruitful, it doesn't matter who criticizes me. (John Bunyan)
26. Holy living consists of doing God's work with a smile. (Mother Teresa)
27. Hence, nearly all vices are rooted in the future. Gratitude looks to the past and love to the present; fear, avarice, lust, and ambition look ahead. (CS Lewis)
28. For you to be successful, sacrifices must be made. It's better that they are made by others but failing that, you'll have to make them yourself. (Rita Mae Brown)
29. If you knew what I know about the power of giving, you would not let a single meal pass without sharing it in some way. (Buddha)
30. God develops the fruit of the Spirit in your life by allowing you to experience circumstances in which you're tempted to express the exact opposite quality!
Character development always involves a choice, and temptation provides that opportunity. (Rick Warren)
31. Don't give up, grow up. (Rick Warren)
32. If you look at the world you'll be distressed. If you look within, you'll be depressed. But if you look at Christ you'll be at rest (Corrie ten Boom)
33. Everything that happens to a child of God is Father-filtered, and He intends to use it for good even when Satan and others mean it for bad. (Rick Warren)
34. When life is rosy, we may slide by with knowing about Jesus, with imitating him and quoting him and speaking of him. But only in suffering will we know Jesus. (Joni Eareckson Tada)
35. Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body. (Seneca)
36. Don't throw away the old bucket until you know whether the new one holds water. (Swedish Proverb)
37. Sadly, a quick review of many popular Christian books reveals that many believers have abandoned living for God's great purposes and settled for personal fulfillment and emotional stability. that is narcissism, not discipleship. (Rick Warren)
38. How could we endure to live and let time pass if we were always crying for one day or one year to come back — if we did not know that every day in a life fills the whole life with expectation and memory? (CS Lewis)
39. If we fall, we don't need self-recrimination or blame or anger — we need a reawakening of our intention and a willingness to recommit, to be whole-hearted once again.
40. Disillusionment with our local church is a good thing because it destroys our false expectations of perfection. (Dietrich Bonhoeffer)
41. He who loves his dream of community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter. (Dietrich Bonhoeffer)
42. People don't care what we know until that know that we care. (Anonymous)
43. Humility is not thinking less of yourself; it is thinking of yourself less. (Rick Warren)
44. The possession of unlimited power will make a despot of almost any man. There is a possible Nero in the gentlest human creature that walks. (Thomas Bailey)
45. I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England. I did not then see what is now the most shining and obvious thing; the Divine humility which will accept a convert even on such terms. The Prodigal Son at least walked home on his own feet. But who can duly adore that Love which will open the high gates to a prodigal who is brought in kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance of escape? (CS Lewis)
46. We should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe. (Oliver Windell Holmes)
47. A proud man is always looking down on things and people: and of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you. (CS Lewis)
48. Miracles: You do not have to look for them. They are there, 24 7, beaming like radio waves all around you. Put up the antenna, turn up the volume - snap... crackle... this just in, every person you talk to is a chance to change the world.... (Hugh Elliott)
49. While there are illegitimate parents, there are no illegitimate children. (Rick Warren)
50. 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."
51. For this is the end of all the stores.... But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All thier life in this world... had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the great Story, which no one on earth has read, which goes on foever and in which every chapter is better than the one before. (CS Lewis)
52. It ought to be the business of every day to prepare for our final day (Matthew Henry)
53. Christians should carry spiritual green cards to remind us that our citizenship is in heaven. (Rick Warren)
54. All that is not eternal is eternally useless (CS Lewis)
55. When you think about a problem over and over in your mind, that's called worry. When you think about God's Word over and over in your mind, that's meditation (Rick Warren)
56. It's not what you do, but how much love you put into it that matters. (Mother Teresa)
57. No great deed, private or public, had ever been undertaken in a bliss of certainty. (Leon Wieseltier)
58. We are not merely imperfect creatures who must be improved: we are, as Newman said, rebels who must lay down our arms. (CS Lewis)
59. Guard well within yourself that treasure, kindness. Know how to give without hesitation, how to lose without regret, how to acquire without meanness. (George Sand)
60. Think of yourself as an incandescent power, illuminated and perhaps forever talked to by God and his messengers. (Brenda Ueland)
61. One of the most sublime experiences we can ever have to to wake up feeling healthy after we have been sick. (Rabbi Harold Kushner)
62. The possibility of pain is inherent in the very existence of a world where souls can meet. When souls become wicked they will certainly use this possibility to hurt one another; and this, perhaps, accounts for four-fifths of the sufferings of men. (CS Lewis)
63. When your work speaks for itself, don't interrupt. (Henry J. Kaiser)
64. Those who don't know how to weep with their whole heart, don't know how to laugh either. (Golda Meir)
65. I don't hire people who have to be told to be nice. I hire nice people. (Leona Helmsly)
66. When someone does something good, applaud! You will make two people happy. (Samuel Goldwyn)
67. The chief lesson I have learned in a long life is that the only way to make a man trustworthy is to trust him; and the surest way to make him untrustworthy is to distrust him and show your distrust. (Henry L. Stimson)
68. There are illegitimate parents, but there are no illegitimate children. (Rick Warren)
69. Unless you assume a God, the questiohn of life's purpose is meaningless. (Bertrand Russell)
70. Hell is a state of mind...and every state of mind, left to itself, every shutting up of the creature within the dungeon of its own mind—is, in the end, Hell. But Heaven is not a state of mind. Heaven is reality itself. All that is fully real is Heavenly. For all that can be shaken will be shaken and only the unshakable remains. (CS Lewis)
71. Underpromise; overdeliver. (Tom Peters)
72. If you must love your neighbor as yourself, it is at least as fair to love yourself as your neighbor. (Sebastien-Roch Nicolas)
73. What is to give light must endure burning. (Viktor Frankl)
74. The Son of God became a man to enable men to become sons of God. (CS Lewis)
75. Journal writing is a voyage to the interior. (Christina Baldwin)
76. To repeat what others have said, requires education; to challenge it, requires brains. (Mary Pettibone Poole)
77. Success isn't permanent, and failure isn't fatal. (Mike Ditka)
78. Just think of the tragedy of teaching children not to doubt. (Clarence Darrow)
79. I can't give you a sure-fire formula for success, but I can give you a formula for failure: try to please everybody all the time. (Herbert Bayard Swope)
80. If a problem has no solution, it may not be a problem, but a fact - not to be solved, but to be coped with over time. (Shimon Peres)
81. Acceptance is such an important commodity, some have called it "the first law of personal growth. (Peter McWilliams)
82. For human beings, you need two hugs a day to survive, four hugs for maintenance, six hugs to grow. (Virginia Satir)
83. If somebody hugs you, you know you must be there or they'll go through you. (Leo Buscaglia)
84. Never forget that we are all still "the early Christians." The present wicked and wasteful divisions between us are, let us hope, a disease of infancy; we are still teething. (CS Lewis)
85. I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. (Harper Lee)
86. Surely what a man does when he is taken off his guard is the best evidence for what sort of man he is? ... If there are rats in a cellar you are most likely to see them if you go in very suddenly. But the suddenness does not create the rats: it only prevents them from hiding. In the same way the suddenness of the provocation does not make me an ill-tempered man: it only shows me what an ill-tempered man I am.(CS Lewis)