Spiritual Emotions Quotes

“Christianity is not a therapy for those who wish never to be upset (177).”
― Robert Campbell Roberts, Spiritual Emotions: A Psychology of Christian Virtues

“There is nothing peculiarly Christian about moods of exaltation and triumph, or passing feelings of one sort or another; these kinds of changes happen just about every time one goes to a movie (156).”
― Robert Campbell Roberts, Spiritual Emotions: A Psychology of Christian Virtues

“We must become friends of despair if we are to be drawn above it to genuine and heartfelt hope. Far from being
an exercise in morbidity or arrogance, a deepening acquaintance with our
death and with the vanity of human wishes is our worldly hearts a
needed path to perfect health (61).”
― Robert Campbell Roberts, Spiritual Emotions: A Psychology of Christian Virtues

“This is really no solution, not primarily because we have no reason to believe it, but because it trades on a shallow analysis of the problem. Our life is compromised not by death, but by something lying in us, within the power of our will. To a superficial view it may look as though all our troubles would be over if only could live a healthy life without end. But down deeper, we want not just more life, but a worthwhile life. The immature that the yearning for immortality is a yearning endless existence, but really it is the yearning for a morally worthy existence. Our current life is unworthy, and its extension beyond the grave will not solve the problem that fact the sting of life is not basically that it comes to a temporal end, but that we are guilty; we have failed to become what we ought, to achieve worthiness. The riddle of life is constituted nor by our mortality, but by our unrighteousness.”
― Robert Campbell Roberts, Spiritual Emotions: A Psychology of Christian Virtues

“To believe ourselves worthless is a terrible and unchristian thing; and not to care that we are worthless is perhaps more woeful still.”
― Robert Campbell Roberts, Spiritual Emotions: A Psychology of Christian Virtues

“The possibility of sadness is tightly bound to the capacity for joy.

A godly sadness is as precious in the eyes of the Lord as the joy that corresponds to it.”
― Robert Campbell Roberts, Spiritual Emotions: A Psychology of Christian Virtues