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where a thing wakes thought and feeling, I say, must not thought and feeling be somewhere concerned in its origin?"
if the world moves thought and feeling in those that regard it, thought and feeling are somehow concerned in the world.
Happily, the choice whether we shall be influenced is not given us; happily, too, the choice whether we shall obey an influence is given us.
there's an undertow bringing us on to each other. It would spoil all if he thought I threw a net for him. I do mean to catch him if I can, but I will not move till the tide brings him into my arms. At least, that is how the thing looks to me at present. I believe enough not to make haste. I don't want to throw salt on any bird's tail, but I do want the birds to come hopping about me, that I may tell them what I know!"
not a word in the Bible against the poor, although a multitude of words against the rich. The sins of the poor are not once mentioned in the Bible, the sins of the rich very often. The rich may think this hard, but I state the fact, and do not much care what they think. When they come to judge themselves and others fairly, they will understand that God is no respecter of persons, not favouring even the poor in his cause.
"And this is the world," he went on, "that the priests would have you believe ruled by the providence of an all powerful and all good being! My heart is sore for the girl—a good girl, if ever there was one, so that I would give—yes, I think I would give my life for her! I certainly would, rather than see her in misery! Of course I would! Any man would, worth calling a man! When it came to the point, I should not think twice about it! And there is he, sitting up there in his glory, and looking down unmoved upon her wretchedness! I will not believe in any such God!" Of course he was more than
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To say there was no God behind the loveliness of things, was to say there was no loveliness—nothing but a pretence of loveliness! The world was a painted thing! a toy for a doll! a phantasm!
are you sure there is no God? Have you gone all through the universe looking for him, and failed to find him? Is there no possible chance that there may be a God!" "I do not believe there is." "But are you sure there is not? Do you know it, so that you have a right to say it?"
Have you read it all through now, Mr. Tuke—so that you are sure it says what you say it says?" "I have not," answered Richard; "but everybody knows what it says!"
What if there be a God who loves me, and cares as little what people say about me, because he knows the truth, as I care about it because I know the truth!—But
by slow gradations the sky's gray idea unfolded to a brilliant conviction, and, lo, there was the morning, not to be controverted!
She did not put the letter H in its place except occasionally, but she knew how to send a selfish thought back to its place.
What evil can there be for which there is no help in another honest human soul!
Any enlargement of relation to the unseen world—the world, I mean, of thought and reality, region of recognizable relation, or force—is an immeasurably more precious gift than any costliest thing that a mortal may call his own until death,
The friendship between such a twain could hardly consist in more than the absence of active disapproval.
It is strange that the man who most keenly feels the wrong done him, should so often be the most insensible to the wrong he does. So dominant is the unreason of the moment, that the injury he inflicts appears absolute justice, and the injury he suffers absolute injustice.
I don't think you can prove anything that is worth being anxious about."
If a man had the same notion of God that I have, or anything like it, and did not at least desire that there might be such a God, then I confess I should have difficulty in understanding how he could be good.
'You cannot know such a being does not exist: is it possible you should be content that such a being should not exist? If such a being did exist, would you be content never to find him, but to go on for ever and ever saying, He can't be! He can't be! He's so good he can't be! Supposing you find one day that there he is, will your defence before him be satisfactory to yourself: "There he is after all, but he was too good to believe in, therefore I did not try to find him"? Will you say to him—"If you had not been so good, if you had been a little less good, a little worse, just a trifle bad, I
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Personally, I find the whole matter of religious teaching and observance in general a very dull business—as dull as most secular teaching. If salvation is anything like what are commonly considered its means, it is to me a consummation devoutly to be deprecated.
When the Lord is known as the heart of every joy, as well as the refuge from every sorrow, then the altar will be known for what it is—an ecclesiastical antique.
The world would not perish if what is called the church did go to pieces; a truer church, for there might well be a truer, would arise out of her ruins. But let no one seek to destroy; let him that builds only take heed that he build with gold and silver and precious stones, not with wood and hay and stubble! If the church were so built, who could harm it! if it were not in part so built, it would be as little worth pulling down as letting stand. There is in it a far deeper and better vitality than its blatant supporters will be able to ruin by their advocacy, or the enviers of its valueless
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She never sought to make one in the parish a churchman, but tried to make every one she had to do with a scholar of Christ, a child to his father in heaven.
In her keen watching, she had so identified herself with the operator, that perfect insight had supplied the place of active experience, and seemed almost to have waked some ancient instinct that operated independent of consciousness.
mirror neurons
As a man does not fear death while yet it seems far away, so a man may not shrink from annihilation while yet he does not realize what it means.
it was not fair, when a man had made something for a purpose, to say it was not good before we knew what his purpose with it was.
She saw that to go on answering the girl from the colonies, with her troublesome freedom of thought and question,
they that lie doom themselves to believe lies as well as disbelieve truths,
Nothing is so dangerous as religious sentiment without truth in the inward parts.
he taught her to know the eternal man who bore witness to his father in the face of his perverse children, to know that his heart was the heart of a child in truth and love, and the heart of a God in courage and patience;
Neither ascetic nor mystic nor doctrinist of any sort, caring nothing for church or chapel, of observance of any kind as observance, she believed in God, and was now ready to die for Jesus Christ, in the eternal gladness that there was such a person as God and such a person as Jesus Christ.
don't try by argument to convince the young man of anything. That were no good, even if you succeeded. Opinion is all that can result from argument, and his opinion concerning God, even if you got it set right, would not be knowledge of God, and would be worth nothing; while, if a man knows God, his opinion is either right, or on the nearest way to be right.
He in whom I believe is the God that says, 'This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased.' It is as if he said—'Look at that man: I am just such! No other likeness of me is a true likeness. Heed my son: heed nobody else. Know him and you know me, and then we are one for ever.'
A God that could be proved, would not be worth proving.
God will love you for believing that he is as good and true as you can think.
God is God to us not that we may say he is, but that we may know him; and when we know him, then we are with him, at home, at the heart of the universe, the heirs of all things. All this is foolishness, I know, to the dull soul that cares only for the things that admit of being proved. The unprovable mystery out of which come the things provable, has for them no interest, they say, because it is unprovable: they take for granted that therefore it is unknowable.
If a thing be true in itself, it is not capable of proof; and that man is in the higher condition who is able to believe it.
The very chance that such a thing may be true, the very fact that it cannot be disproved, is large reason for an honest, and continuous, and unending search. Do you hold any door in your nature open for the possibility of a God having a claim on you? The truth is, as I hinted before, that you are not drawn to the idea, do not like it; and it is therefore you turn away, and not because you have no proof.—If
People say, 'Children will be children!' but I see little consolation in that. Children must be children, and ought to be good children. They are made to be good children, just as much as men are made to be good men.
"I am so glad you whipt the darling!" said Barbara, scarcely able to speak. "I shall love him more than ever."
am yisrael chai
Lady Ann's God was the head of the English aristocracy.
the dry bones of books are every hour coming alive to the reader in whose spirit is blowing the better spirit.
Richard thought his soul was full, but a live soul can never be full; it is always growing larger, and is always being filled.
There's nothing a man is so grateful for as friendliness."
For her consciousness had never yet presented her as she really was, but always through the conditional and non-essential,
The loss of all that the world counts first things is a thousandfold repaid in the mere waking to higher need.
The sufferer resembles a child that has not been tempted, whose trial is yet to come. With recovery, fresh claim will be put in by the powers of good. This claim will be resisted by old habit, resuming its force in the return of physical and psychical health,—and then comes the tug of war. For no one can be saved, as he who knows his master would be saved, without the will being supreme in the matter, without the choosing to fulfill all righteousness, to resist the wrong, to do the right.
God is the God of patience, and waits and waits for the child who keeps him waiting and will not open the door.
The good in a true book, he would say, is the best protection against what may not be so good in it; its wrong as well as its right may wake the conscience: the thoughts of a book accuse and excuse one another. In saying so, he took the true reader for granted; to an untrue reader the truth itself is untrue.
Among men who could, without seeming to aim at it, make another think, I have not met the equal of Wingfold. His mode was that of the open-hearted apostle, who took men by guile. He called out the thoughts lurking in their souls, and set them dealing with those thoughts, not with him:
