Noah

“In those days,” Ruth-Alice recalled, “the Nazis were always marching and saying, ‘The future belongs to us! We are the future!’ And we young ones who were against Hitler and the Nazis would hear this and we wondered, ‘Where is our future?’ But there in Finkenwalde, when I heard this man preaching, who had been captured by God, I thought: ‘Here. Here is our future.”
― Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy

“Kenneth Clark referred to Leonardo’s “inhumanly sharp eye.” It’s a nice phrase, but misleading. Leonardo was human. The acuteness of his observational skill was not some superpower he possessed. Instead, it was a product of his own effort. That’s important, because it means that we can, if we wish, not just marvel at him but try to learn from him by pushing ourselves to look at things more curiously and intensely. In his notebook, he described his method—almost like a trick—for closely observing a scene or object: look carefully and separately at each detail. He compared it to looking at the page of a book, which is meaningless when taken in as a whole and instead needs to be looked at word by word. Deep observation must be done in steps: “If you wish to have a sound knowledge of the forms of objects, begin with the details of them, and do not go on to the second step until you have the first well fixed in memory.”
― Walter Isaacson, Leonardo da Vinci

“Don’t come to Jesus and try to be intellectually stimulating to Him. There’s nothing you could say that would cause Him to respond, “Wow, that’s a neat insight!” You may as well abort all attempts to be cerebral with Jesus; He simply doesn’t try to engage us at that level. Just come and love Him. He’s looking for heartfelt sincerity, for visceral passion, for authentic relationship.”
― Bob Sorge, Secrets of the Secret Place

“But my later experience has taught me two lessons: first, that things are seen plainer after the events have occurred; second, that the most confident critics are generally those who know the least about the matter criticised.”
― Grant, Ulysses S., Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant: All Volumes