Dan

“Character, wisdom, and love make up the essence of what it means to be an authentic man. In fact, I would like to address the significance of each of these qualities and why it is so important that we possess them.”
― Richard E. Simmons III, The True Measure of a Man, How Perceptions of Success, Achievement & Recognition Fail Men in Difficult Times

“But at the heart of character is the ability to restrain our desires. As a man grows in character, he builds the muscles of self-restraint.”
― Richard E. Simmons III, The True Measure of a Man, How Perceptions of Success, Achievement & Recognition Fail Men in Difficult Times

“Simply stated, life’s greatest paradox can be summed up in the words, True strength is found in humility. The apostle Paul tells us as much in 2 Corinthians 12 when he reveals a struggle in his own life with what he calls “a thorn in the flesh.” He asks God to remove the pain and the suffering of this affliction. God’s response is no, and instead He tells Paul: “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.”
― Richard E. Simmons III, The True Measure of a Man, How Perceptions of Success, Achievement & Recognition Fail Men in Difficult Times

“When J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy was published in the 1950s, a woman named Rhona Beare wrote Tolkien and asked him about the chapter in which the Ring of Power is destroyed in the fires of Mount Doom. When the ring is melted, the Dark Lord’s entire power collapses and melts away with it. She found it inexplicable that this unassailable, overwhelming power would be wiped out by the erasure of such a little object. Tolkien replied that at the heart of the plot was the Dark Lord’s effort to magnify and maximize his power by placing so much of it in the ring. He wrote: “The Ring of Sauron is only one of the various mythical treatments of the placing of one’s life, or power, in some external object, which is thus exposed to capture or destruction with disastrous results to oneself.”
― Timothy Keller, Walking with God through Pain and Suffering