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“We should so reason that the splendor of the divine countenance, which even the apostle calls ‘unapproachable’ [1 Tim. 6.16], is for us like an inexplicable labyrinth unless we are conducted into it by the thread of the Word; so that it is better to limp along this path than to dash with all speed outside of it.”
John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, I, 7, 3.
“We are here none knows why, and we go none knows whither. We must be very humble. We must see the beauty of quietness. We must go through life so inconspicuously that Fate does not notice us. And let us seek the love of simple, ignorant people. Their ignorance is better than all out knowledge. Let us be silent, content in our little corner, meek and gentle like them. That is the wisdom of life.”
A somber Dirk Stroeve, after his wife leaves him and commits suicide. W. Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence (New York: Penguin, 1944), 129-30.
“There was a time when fox-hunting was the greatest sport in this country, but it has long since been replaced by divorce.”
Lloyd-Jones; Iain H. Murray, D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones: The First Forty Years, 1899-1939 (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2002), 66.
“… yea, as touching myself, to tell the truth, he [God] sometimes assaileth me to mightily, and oppresseth me with such heavy cogitations, that he utterly shadoweth my Saviour Christ from me, and, in a manner, taketh Him clean out of my sight.”
Martin Luther, Commentary on Galatians, Translated by Erasmus Middleton (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel, 1979), 104.
“He also told the story of some Massachusetts commissioners who invited the Indians to send a dozen of their youth to study free at Harvard. The Indians replied that they had sent some of their young braves to study there years earlier, but on their return ‘they were absolutely good for nothing, being neither acquainted with the true methods for killing deer, catching beaver, or surprising an enemy.’ They offered instead to educate a dozen or so white children in the ways of the Indians ‘and make men of them.’”
Walter Isaacson, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003), 153; citing Benjamin Franklin in a letter to Peter Collinson, May 9, 1753.
“The least fracture now will be like a name engraved with the point of a pin on the tender rind of a young oak; the wound will enlarge with the tree, and posterity read it in full grown characters.”
Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 2nd printing of Feb. 14, 1776 as edited by Isaac Kramnick (London: Penguin, 1986), 82.
“‘Brother, our will is quieted by virtue
Of charity, that makes us wish alone
For what we have, nor gives us thirst for more.
If to be more exalted we aspired,
Discordant would our aspirations be
Unto the will of Him who here secludes us;
Which thou shalt see finds no place in theses circles,
If being in charity is needful here,
And if thou lookest well into its nature;
Nay, ’tis essential to this blest existence
To keep itself within the will divine,
Whereby our very wishes are made one;
So that, as we are station above station
Throughout this realm, to all the realm ’tis pleasing,
As to the King, who makes his will our will.
And his will is our peace; this is the sea
To which is moving onward whatsoever
It doth create, and all that nature makes.’”
Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, “Paradiso,” Translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Canto III, 70-87; Spoken by Piccarda (Piccarda Donati, a relative of Dante’s wife), describing why she is content on the first, and lowest, heavenly sphere (the lunarary sphere of the Breakers of Vows).
“I think the trouble with me is lack of faith. I have no rational ground for going back on the arguments that convinced me of God’s existence: but the irrational deadweight of my old sceptical habits, and the spirit of this age, and the cares of the day, steal away all my lively feeling of the truth, and often when I pray I wonder if I am not posting letters to a non-existent address. Mind you I don’t think so – the whole of my reasonable mind is convinced: but I often feel so. However, there is nothing to do but to peg away. One falls so often that it hardly seems worth while picking oneself up and going through the farce of starting over again as if you could ever hope to walk. Still, this seeming absurdity is the only sensible thing I do, so I must continue it. And all the time, on the other side, the imaginative side, (the fairy angel) I get such glimpses and vanishing memories as often take my breath away: as if they said ‘Look what you’re losing’ – as if they were there just to deprive one of all excuse.”
Walter Hooper, ed., The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis: Family Letters 1905-1931 (San Francisco: Harper, 2004), 944-45; written to his friend, Arthur Greeves, dated 24 December, 1930.
“It is just like the difference between vague general philanthropy (which is all balls) and learning first to love your own friends and neighbors which makes you more, not less, able to love the next stranger who comes along. If a man loveth not his brother whom he hath seen – etc. [1 John 4.20] In other words doesn’t one get to the universal (either in people or in inanimate nature) thro’ the individual – not by going off into a mere generalised mash.”
Walter Hooper, ed., The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis: Family Letters 1905-1931 (San Francisco: Harper, 2004), 912; written to his friend, Arthur Greeves, dated 31 June, 1930.
“‘. . . among so many things as are by men possessed or pursued in the course of their lives, all the rest are baubles, besides old wood to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to converse with, and old books to read.’”
Walter Hooper, ed., The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis: Family Letters 1905-1931 (San Francisco: Harper, 2004), 700; written to his father, dated 28 May, 1927; citing (from memory, of course!), the words of Alphonsus, King of Aragon found in Essays of Sir William Temple, vol. 2 (1822), 93-4.
