Robert

“Night, the beloved. Night, when words fade and things come alive. When the destructive analysis of day is done, and all that is truly important becomes whole and sound again. When man reassembles his fragmentary self and grows with the calm of a tree.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

“Open your eyes and see how many gifts there are to unwrap. Notice the presence of your presents. It’s not your life that is disappointing: it’s your mind.”
― Gregg Krech, Naikan: Gratitude, Grace, and the Japanese Art of Self-Reflection

“But there seems to have been an actual decline in rational thinking. The United States had become a place where entertainers and professional athletes were mistaken for people of importance. They were idolized and treated as leaders; their opinions were sought on everything and they took themselves just as seriously — after all, if an athlete is paid a million or more a year, he knows he is important … so his opinions of foreign affairs and domestic policies must be important, too, even though he proves himself to be both ignorant and subliterate every time he opens his mouth. (Most of his fans were just as ignorant and unlettered; the disease was spreading.)”
― Robert A. Heinlein, To Sail Beyond the Sunset

“Salvation is not about believing that you are a believer. How do you even know you’re a believer? If you’re looking to your own subjective experience or an encounter – who’s to say you didn’t misinterpret your conversion experience, or that it didn’t go deep enough? You’ll go headlong into an endless spiral of navel-gazing. There may be a valid moment of encounter, but you can’t bank on that. And if you are banking on it, you’re still having faith in your own experience. The only thing you can bank on is that Christ was crucified to save you. Done deal – you’re in!”
― John Crowder, Cosmos Reborn