Ralph Strong > Ralph's Quotes

“You know what I did after I wrote my first novel? I shut up and wrote twenty-three more."

("The Castle")”
― Michael Connelly

“Jesus taught in parables for a reason.”
― Stuart Connelly

“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“Life is like a novel. It's filled with suspense. You have no idea what is going to happen until you turn the page.”
― sidney sheldon

“Don’t walk in front of me… I may not follow
Don’t walk behind me… I may not lead
Walk beside me… just be my friend”
― Albert Camus

“Life is an awful, ugly place to not have a best friend.”
― Sarah Dessen, Someone Like You

“Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.”
― Mother Teresa

“Christianity is wild. It’s intimate. It’s heartbreaking and soul-mending. It’s the wings to rise above the everyday and hope of a honeymoon with the God who has loved you forever. The party has just begun, and the best is yet to come.”
― Steven James, Story: Recapture the Mystery

“Too many of us are hung up on what we don't have, can't have, or won't ever have. We spend too much energy being down, when we could use that same energy – if not less of it – doing, or at least trying to do, some of the things we really want to do.”
― Terry McMillan , Disappearing Acts

“His grace is cheapened when you think that He has only forgiven you of your sins up to the time you got saved, and after that point, you have to depend on your confession of sins to be forgiven. God's forgiveness is not given in installments.”
― Joseph Prince, Unmerited Favor

“Sometimes beautiful things come into our lives out of nowhere. We can't always understand them, but we have to trust in them. I know you want to question everything, but sometimes it pays to just have a little faith.”
― Lauren Kate, Torment

“I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end.”
― Gilda Radner

“Sipping once, sipping twice, sipping chicken soup with rice.”
― Maurice Sendak, Chicken Soup With Rice: A Book of Months

“Even the smallest of creatures carries the sun in its eyes.”
― antonio porchia

“You may choose to look the other way but you can never say again that you did not know.”
― William Wilberforce

“Although there are things that can be done to enhance corporate worship, there is a profound sense in which excellent worship cannot be attained merely by pursuing excellent worship. In the same way that, according to Jesus, you cannot find yourself until you lose yourself, so also you cannot find excellent corporate worship until you stop trying to find excellent corporate worship and pursue God himself. Despite the protestations, one sometimes wonders if we are beginning to worship worship rather than worship God. As a brother put it to me, it’s a bit like those who begin by admiring the sunset and soon begin to admire themselves admiring the sunset.”
― D.A. Carson, Worship by the Book

“Free will I have often heard of, but I have never seen it. I have always met with will, and plenty of it, but it has either been led captive by sin or held in the blessed bonds of grace.”
― Charles H. Spurgeon

“We have to grow into Scripture, like a young boy inheriting his older brother's clothes and flopping around in them, but he gradually builds out and grows up. Perhaps it's a measure of our maturity when parts of Scripture that we found odd or even repellent suddenly come up in a new light. Our sense is overtaken by a sense of the whole thing, wide, multicolored, and unspeakably powerful.”
― N.T. Wright, After You Believe: Why Christian Character Matters

“If you love someone, tell them.
Tell them now.
Because two hearts can easily be broken
By 3 small words that are left unspoken.”
― José N. Harris

“Most of the challenges in my life
Seemed hopelessly impossible
So, I ended up doing what I had to do
I went ahead and did them
[true story]”
― José N. Harris

“I've come to the conclusion that buying a house is a lot like courting a woman. You think you know what you are looking for, but you never really can be sure what you are going to end up with, what you are getting yourself into, how long is it going to take or how much its going to cost you. Outer appearances can be deceiving.

There's bound to be surprises- both pleasant ones and the unpleasant. When you see them in person they usually don't look the same as they do in their pictures. You can find them with big backyards and with big front yards, but if you are set on having both, its definitely going to cost you.”
― José N. Harris

“You
The run
The kiss
The night
New day
New love
New dreams
Its right”
― José N. Harris

“We must be global Christians with a global vision because we serve a global God.”
― John Stott

“Discipleship means adherence to Christ, and, because Christ is the object of that adherence, it must take the form of discipleship. An abstract Christology, a doctrinal system, a general religious knowledge on the subject of grace or on the forgiveness of sins, render discipleship superfluous, and in fact they positively exclude any idea of discipleship whatever, and are essentially inimical to the whole conception of following Christ.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship

“The one thing we can never get enough of is love. And the one thing we never give enough of is love.”
― Henry Miller

“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
― Maya Angelou

“We are created for the sake of love. When we experience love in family life, it is heavenly, but it is still only an image of the greater glory we hope to behold in heaven.”
― Scott Hahn

“Life is a book and you are its author. You detemine its plot and pace and you--only you--turn its pages.”
― Beth Mende Conny

“Faith does not mean mimicking Jesus, but participating in his self-giving love—not because we have somehow chosen to be like him, but because, incredibly, God has chosen to become like us.”
― Kenda Creasy Dean, Almost Christian : What the Faith of Our Teenagers is Telling the American Church

“We must move beyond an anemic view of our faith as something only personal and private, with no public dimension, and instead see it as the source of power that can change the world. ”
― Richard Stearns, The Hole in Our Gospel: What Does God Expect of Us?