The power of the world, the spirit of its literature, the temptations of business and pleasure, all unite to make up a religion in which it is sought to combine a comfortable hope for the future with the least possible amount of sacrifice in the present.

~ Andrew Murray

There is nothing so ridiculous but some philosopher has said it.

Cicero, De Divinatione.

Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions.

~ G. K. Chesterton

For nineteen and a half centuries, the Christian churches have labored, not without success, to remove this unfortunate impression made by their Lord and Master. They have hustled the Magdalens from the communion table, founded total abstinence societies in the name of him who made the water wine, and added improvements of their own, such as various bans and anathemas upon dancing and theatergoing....Feeling that the original commandment ‘thou shalt not work’ was rather half hearted, [they] have added to it a new commandment, ‘thou shalt not play.

~Dorothy L. Sayers

(gleaned from RZIM's Slice of Infinity, "Bad Reputations")

There once was in man a true happiness, of which all that
now remains is the empty print and trace. This he tries
in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in
things that are not there the help he cannot find in those
that are, though none can help, because the infinite abyss
can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object;
in other words, by God himself. He only is our true good,
and since we have forsaken him, it is a strange thing that
there is nothing in nature which has not been serviceable
in taking His place; the stars, the heavens, earth, the
elements, plants, cabbages, leeks, animals, insects, calves,
serpents, fever, pestilence, war, famine, vices, adultery,
incest. And since man has lost the true good, everything
can appear equally good to him, even his own
destruction, though so opposed to God, to reason,
and to the whole course of nature.

~Blaise Pascal

I have learned that God provides, not when we want it, but when we need it.

All this talk about wanting to know the truth is gibberish, illusion, and hypocrisy. Every person understands the truth a good deal more than he lives it. Why does he not do more, then? Ah, there’s the rub!

~ Kierkegaard

It is a sad thing indeed, that people are identified as Christians by association with the ecclesiastical institution.
Once, long ago, it wasn't so.

Couldn't we, for once, live as Christ had?
Ah, yes. I'd forgotten. It's too dangerous.

Ravi Zacharias, in his talk "Mind Games in a World of Images",
quoted Fyodor Dostoevsky as prophesying,

First, art would imitate life,
then life would imitate art,
and finally, life would draw the very reason for its existence
from the arts.

Philosophy used to mean a love of wisdom.
It now means a love of sophistry.

Anything to avoid God.

For where your thoughts are, there will your heart be also.

On politics:

A Thai rice farmer is of more concern to God than the state of America.

Sterile not only means clean, it also means dead.

Church is a good antidote for God.

It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.
~ Krishnamurti

But to be forgiven we must first believe in sin.
~Jewel

I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.
~ Douglas Adams

quiet desperation

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.

~ Thoreau, Walden

http://simplymerry.blogspot.com/2007/06/price-of-life.html