Emily > Emily's Quotes

“I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world and a desire to enjoy (or savor) the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.”
― E. B. White

“9p.m. My flat. Feel very strange and empty. Is all very well thinking everything is going to be different when you come back but then it is all the same. Suppose I have to make it different. But what am I going to do with my life?
I know. Will eat some cheese.”
― Helen Fielding, Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason

“It seems to me people tend to forget that we are to love our enemies, not to satisfy some standard of righteousness but because God their Father loves them.”
― Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

“Love is holy because it is like grace--the worthiness of its object is never really what matters.”
― Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

“I was so tired of this ceaseless, day-to-day tug-of-war between my hormones and my head, my vanity and my virtue. I felt very much as though I were caught in the middle of some dreadful battle in which taking a side of my own would mean certain misery in either case.”
― Emily Tomko

“I told you the Bible was more to be depended on than newspapers!”
― L.M. Montgomery, The Story Girl

“When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.”
― Deitrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship

“A God who let us prove his existence would be an idol”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“There are no coroners in Paraguay.”
― Graham Greene

“Without work men are utterly undone.”
― Nevil Shute, Ruined City

“This house sheltered us, we spoke, we loved within those walls. That was yesterday. To-day we pass on, we see it no more, and we are different, changed in some infinitesimal way. We can never be quite the same again.”
― Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca

“Evelyn was followed in by a sour-faced woman with long, glamorous dark hair and a stern-looking gentleman in a tuxedo who looked just like Julian, but with less hair. They both looked as though they might buy the auditorium just to burn it to the ground. Even in this crowd they seemed assuredly a cut above the rest.”
― Kristopher Jansma, The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards

“Atheists don’t hate fairies, leprechauns, or unicorns because they don’t exist. It is impossible to hate something that doesn't exist. Atheists — like the painting experts hated the painter — hate God because He does exist.”
― Ray Comfort, You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, But You Can't Make Him Think: Answers to Questions from Angry Skeptics

“What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.”
― A.W. Tozer

“In the world it is called Tolerance, but in hell it is called Despair...the sin that believes in nothing, cares for nothing, seeks to know nothing, interferes with nothing, enjoys nothing, hates nothing, finds purpose in nothing, lives for nothing, and remains alive because there is nothing for which it will die.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers

“The homemaker has the ultimate career. All other careers exist for one purpose only - and that is to support the ultimate career. ”
― C.S. Lewis

“Write something to suit yourself and many people will like it; write something to suit everybody and scarcely anyone will care for it.”
― Jesse Stuart

“We need to help people to discover the true meaning of love. Love is generally confused with dependence. Those of us who have grown in true love know that we can love only in proportion to our capacity for independence.”
― Fred Rogers, The World According to Mister Rogers: Important Things to Remember

“Und dann sehe ich doch auch gleich, dass Sie anders sind als andere, dafür haben wir Frauen ein scharfes Auge.”
― Theodor Fontane, Effi Briest

“I have but one passion: It is He, it is He alone. The world is the field and the field is the world; and henceforth that country shall be my home where I can be most used in winning souls for Christ.”
― Count Nicolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf

“I am destined to proclaim the message, unmindful of personal consequences to myself.”
― Count Nicolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf

“It is better to die for the truth than to live for a lie. Let it cost me what it will, I will not depart from the truth, even to save my own or my father’s life. I will obey God, and trust Him for the rest.”
― Christoph von Schmid, The Basket of Flowers: A Tale for the Young

“Our heart is a garden, which the good God has given us to cultivate, and we must always be aware of the weeds that grow without observation. It is necessary that we should unceasingly apply ourselves to the cultivation of the good and the extraction of the evil which might take root.”
― Christoph von Schmid, The Basket of Flowers: A Tale for the Young

“I love inscriptions on flyleaves and notes in margins, I like the comradely sense of turning pages someone else turned, and reading passages someone long gone has called my attention to.”
― Helene Hanff, 84, Charing Cross Road

“Why is it that people who wouldn't dream of stealing anything else think it's perfectly all right to steal books?”
― Helene Hanff, 84, Charing Cross Road

“I personally can't think of anything less sacrosanct than a bad book or even a mediocre book.”
― Helene Hanff, 84, Charing Cross Road

“He wanted to know how they prayed to God in El Dorado. "We do not pray to him at all," said the reverend sage. "We have nothing to ask of him. He has given us all we want, and we give him thanks continually.”
― Voltaire, Candide

“The worst illiterate is the political illiterate, he doesn’t hear, doesn’t speak, nor participates in the political events. He doesn’t know the cost of life, the price of the bean, of the fish, of the flour, of the rent, of the shoes and of the medicine, all depends on political decisions. The political illiterate is so stupid that he is proud and swells his chest saying that he hates politics. The imbecile doesn’t know that, from his political ignorance is born the prostitute, the abandoned child, and the worst thieves of all, the bad politician, corrupted and flunky of the national and multinational companies.”
― Bertolt Brecht

“I have not yet been able to stereotype my theological views, and have ceased to expect ever to do so. The idea is preposterous. None but an omniscient mind can continue to maintain a precise identity of views and opinions. Finite minds, unless they are asleep or stultified by prejudice, must advance in knowledge. The discovery of new truth will modify old views and opinions, and there is perhaps no end to this process with finite minds in any world. True Christian consistency does not consist in stereotyping our opinions and views, and in refusing to make any improvement lest we should be guilty of change, but it consists in holding our minds open to receive the rays of truth from every quarter and in changing our views and language and practice as often and as fast, as we can obtain further information. I call this Christian consistency, because this course alone accords with a Christian profession. A Christian profession implies the profession of candour and of a disposition to know and obey all truth. It must follow, that Christian consistency implies continued investigation and change of views and practice corresponding with increasing knowledge. No Christian, therefore, and no theologian should be afraid to change his views, his language, or his practices in conformity with increasing light. The prevalence of such a fear would keep the world, at best, at a perpetual stand-still, on all subjects of science, and consequently all improvements would be precluded.”
― Charles Grandison Finney, Systematic Theology By Charles G. Finney

“It was very common to find Christians, whenever they met in any place, instead of engaging in conversation, to fall on their knees in prayer.”
― Charles Grandison Finney, Autobiography of Charles G. Finney