The Good Book Quotes

“The wise say that our failure is to form habits: for habit is the mark of a stereotyped world,”
― A.C. Grayling, The Good Book: A Humanist Bible

“For we live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths; and our time should be counted in the throbs of our hearts as we love and help, learn and strive, and make from our own talents whatever can increase the stock of the world’s good.”
― A.C. Grayling, The Good Book: A Secular Bible

“1. Those who first set themselves to discover nature’s secrets and designs, fearlessly opposing mankind’s early ignorance, deserve our praise;   2. For they began the quest to measure what once was unmeasurable, to discern its laws, and conquer time itself by understanding.   3. New eyes were needed to see what lay hidden in ignorance, new language to express the unknown,   4. New hope that the world would reveal itself to inquiry and investigation.   5. They sought to unfold the world’s primordial sources, asking how nature yields its abundance and fosters it,   6. And where in its course everything goes when it ends, either to change or cease.   7. The first inquirers named nature’s elements atoms, matter, seeds, primal bodies, and understood that they are coeval with the world;   8. They saw that nothing comes from nothing, so that discovering the elements reveals how the things of nature exist and evolve.   9. Fear holds dominion over people when they understand little, and need simple stories and legends to comfort and explain; 10. But legends and the ignorance that give them birth are a house of limitations and darkness. 11. Knowledge is freedom, freedom from ignorance and its offspring fear; knowledge is light and liberation, 12. Knowledge that the world contains itself, and its origins, and the mind of man, 13. From which comes more know­ledge, and hope of knowledge again. 14. Dare to know: that is the motto of enlightenment.  ”
― Anthony C. Grayling, The Good Book: A Secular Bible

“Do not regret having lived, but while yet living live in a way that allows you to think that you were not born in vain.
And do not regret that you must die: it is what all who are wise must Wish, to have life end at its proper time.
For nature puts a limit to living as to everything else,
And we are the sons and daughters of nature, and for us therefore the sleep of nature is nature's final kindness”
― A.C. Grayling, The Good Book: A Humanist Bible

“Emotion is bad if it hinders the mind from thinking. An
emotion that opens the mind to contemplate several
aspects of things at once is better than one that fixes
thought to an obsession.”
― A.C. Grayling, The Good Book: A Humanist Bible

“  1. Do not be proud of any excellence that is not your own. If a horse should be proud and say, ‘I am handsome’, it would be supportable.   2. But when you are proud and say, ‘I have a handsome horse’, know that you are proud of something that belongs not to you but to the horse.   3. What, then, is your own? Only your reaction to the appearances of things.   4. Thus, when you react to how things appear in true accordance with their nature, you will be proud with reason; for you will take pride in some good of your own.   5. Consider when, on a voyage, your ship is anchored; if you go on shore to get water you may amuse yourself along the way with picking up a shellfish.   6. However, your attention must also be towards the ship, waiting for the captain to call you on board;   7. For when he does so, you must immediately leave all these things, otherwise you will miss the ship as it sails.   8. So it is with life. Whatever you find while, so to say, wandering on the beach, is fine.   9. But if necessity calls, you must run to the ship, leaving these things, and regarding none of them. 10. For there is a proper time for all things, including a proper time to grieve, and to prepare to die. 11. The question to be asked at the end of each day is, ‘How long will you delay to be wise?”
― Anthony C. Grayling, The Good Book: A Secular Bible

“Therefore, encourage and toughen your mind against the mishaps that afflict even the most powerful and the most successful,
For accident and illness can in a moment take away all that was built over many years.
So I declare to you: he is lord of your life that scorns his own. Be the lord of your own life therefore, by not fearing to lose it.
Since the day we were born we are being led towards the day we die: in the interim let us be courageous, and do good things.”
― A.C. Grayling, The Good Book: A Humanist Bible

“What sort of charge against old age is the nearness of death, when this is shared by youth?
Yes, you will say; but a young man expects to live long; an old man cannot expect to do so.
Well, the young man is a fool to expect it. For what can be more foolish than to regard the uncertain as certain, the false as true?
An old man has nothing even to hope. ' Ah, but it is just there that he is in a better position than the young man, since what the latter only hopes he has obtained:
The one wishes to live long; the other has lived long.
And yet! what is 'long' in a man's life? For grant the utmost limit: let us expect an age like that of the king of the Tartessi, who reigned eighty years and lived a hundred and twenty.
Nothing seems long in which there is any . last' , for when that arrives, then all the past has slipped away -only that remains which you have earned by virtue and righteous actions.
Hours indeed, and days and months and years depart, nor does past time ever return, nor can the future be known.
Whatever time each is granted for life, with that he is bound to be content.”
― A.C. Grayling, The Good Book: A Humanist Bible

“And among them their satellites, on one of which is a part of nature that mirrors nature in itself,”
― Anthony C. Grayling, The Good Book: A Secular Bible

“Penicros answered, ‘A bad man quarrelled with a good man, saying “For every word of abuse I hear from you, I will retort ten.” 9. ‘The good man replied, “For every ten words of abuse I hear from you, I will not retort one.” 10. ‘That is the difference between a bad man and a good; and between a foolish man and a wise.”
― A.C. Grayling, The Good Book: A Secular Bible