Love What Lasts Quotes

“Selling an heirloom always involves converting a thing’s spiritual value into economic value, which is commonly known as “a Faustian bargain.” The devil is always willing to trade physical goods for spiritual ones; however, money has no spiritual value, which is why the love of money is the root of spiritual corruption.”
― Joshua Gibbs, Love What Lasts: How to Save Your Soul From Mediocrity

“While money can be evenly redistributed, purchasing power cannot, for one man can do more with a million dollars than a million men can do with a dollar each. The same is true of power and glory, which only exist in contrast. Two equal powers set against one another are stagnant. Likewise, glory exists only in comparative accumulations. The top of a pyramid is the most glorious part, but the glory of the pyramid’s peak cannot be redistributed among each stone in the edifice without leveling it. The redistribution of glory is indistinguishable from the immolation of glory. ”
― Joshua Gibbs, Love What Lasts: How to Save Your Soul From Mediocrity

“Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” argues the Republican, who believes no one man should inherit more power than another. “Yes,” replies the Marxist, who believes no man should inherit more wealth than another. “Money corrupts, as well, and great sums of money corrupt all the more.” For every objection the Republican has to the socialist’s conception of wealth, the monarchist has a similar objection to the Republican’s conception of power.”
― Joshua Gibbs, Love What Lasts: How to Save Your Soul From Mediocrity

“While progressives have great contempt for the past, they often have a more accurate sense of the past’s worth than conservatives do. Naïve and unrefined conservatives are sometimes willing to sell off huge tracts of the past at cut rates, but progressives who buy up the past never underestimate its worth. Because traditional things are so profoundly valuable, progressives are constantly angling for conservatives to give them up. The person who controls icons of the past also has some power over everyone whose identity is represented by those icons.”
― Joshua Gibbs, Love What Lasts: How to Save Your Soul From Mediocrity

“Fake things are easy to love because we only have to love them for a little while and need feel no guilt at abandoning them whenever loving them becomes difficult. Old things are hard to love, though, and not just because Modernity has villainized the past and all those who love old things, but because things which last are always confrontational, offensive, and unimpressed with our most prized claims of progress.”
― Joshua Gibbs, Love What Lasts: How to Save Your Soul From Mediocrity

“We return to deep [works of art] not because we like them, but because we are lost without them.”
― Joshua Gibbs, Love What Lasts: How to Save Your Soul From Mediocrity

“It is rather easy to make a film more sensual than the last— one simply needs more dynamite, guns, aliens, and skin. However, making a more profound sequel requires a deeper soul, not deeper pockets.”
― Joshua Gibbs, Love What Lasts: How to Save Your Soul From Mediocrity

“Modern Christians do not often talk of shallowness because the word confirms our fears that the human soul may exist in more than just two states, saved and damned.”
― Joshua Gibbs, Love What Lasts: How to Save Your Soul From Mediocrity

“It is possible for a man to become dangerously shallow without ever watching or listening to anything which is “sinful.”
― Joshua Gibbs, Love What Lasts: How to Save Your Soul From Mediocrity

“Once Modern men discern that traditional things offer certain advantages, they are always tempted to say, “There is an awful lot about this I like. But I don’t like everything about it. Perhaps I can keep the parts I like and remove the parts that are distasteful and annoying.” However, if traditional things work just as well without the distasteful and unlikable parts, some sage would have removed those part a long time ago. The parts of old things that Modern men do not like are exactly what make old things work.”
― Joshua Gibbs, Love What Lasts: How to Save Your Soul From Mediocrity

“Long term exposure to fake things makes real things seem overly dull, demanding, expensive, messy, complicated, and pretentious. Those raised on watermelon candy will find actual watermelon not sweet enough. Anyone raised on comic book movies will not find Hamlet or Paradise Lost sufficiently exciting. Anyone raised on Big Macs will find French onion soup too pungent, or else not sweet enough, not fatty enough, or not salty enough.”
― Joshua Gibbs, Love What Lasts: How to Save Your Soul From Mediocrity

“If there is anything worth suffering for or sacrificing for, there will also be a market for fake versions of that thing. Fake designer goods convey an image of wealth and good taste where there is none. Fake flavors convey a love of nature where there is none. Fake virtues convey an image of selflessness where there is none. Fake worship conveys an appearance of piety where there is only a desire to be entertained. We settle for fakery whenever the costs and risks entailed by reality are too high and the benefits gained by feigning obeisance to reality too alluring to pass up.”
― Joshua Gibbs, Love What Lasts: How to Save Your Soul From Mediocrity

“Fake things take the three or four most obvious or most pleasant aspects of the real, then blow them out of proportion until none of the esoteric or difficult aspects of the real thing are left.”
― Joshua Gibbs, Love What Lasts: How to Save Your Soul From Mediocrity

“Having abandoned the concept of nature, Modern men have largely lost the ability to judge anything to be fake. In the same way special things cannot exist unless there are normal things, we may not declare anything fake unless we are willing to acknowledge some things are real. However, “real” is a concept which implies not only the existence of something which transcends mere appearances, but a confidence that this something can manifest itself in tangible, material forms.”
― Joshua Gibbs, Love What Lasts: How to Save Your Soul From Mediocrity

“In the last several decades, academia has more and more adamantly taught that “understanding the experiences of others” is the highest aspiration of the responsible reader... “Understanding the experiences of…” is a euphemism for coming to feel sympathy for the kind of person who has written a book, though progressives have also become profoundly critical of the idea that one kind of man may identify his own struggles with the life of another kind of man.”
― Joshua Gibbs, Love What Lasts: How to Save Your Soul From Mediocrity

“Anyone looking to follow in the footsteps of Pollock, Rothko, or Mondrian is out of luck. Pollock was not interested in painting nature. He was not interested in the world or in reality itself. Rather, he painted himself, as all Modern artists must do. Imitation is a failure of self-expression. Imitation is treason, for every act of imitation looks to the past. Imitation also implies hierarchy, for a man must choose who to imitate. If he claims to imitate no one, though, he may claim success in all that he undertakes, for he has no standard outside himself by which his work can be judged.”
― Joshua Gibbs, Love What Lasts: How to Save Your Soul From Mediocrity

“To say that Mark Rothko painted “colorful rectangles” really does sum up the man’s oeuvre. The thrill of Rothko’s work is entirely bound up in the massive size of his canvases. The same is true of Pollock and Newman. Had either been forced to use notebook sized canvases, all their power would be lost. On the other hand, the Mona Lisa is still interesting when reduced to the size of a postage stamp.”
― Joshua Gibbs, Love What Lasts: How to Save Your Soul From Mediocrity

“Tradition implies obedience and predictability, but the specialness of special things is their refusal to obey.”
― Joshua Gibbs, Love What Lasts: How to Save Your Soul From Mediocrity

“Because new special things empty old special things of their specialness, there is no tradition of special.”
― Joshua Gibbs, Love What Lasts: How to Save Your Soul From Mediocrity

“The problem with “special” things, though, is that they do not last. As a category of being, “special” cannot help being vampiric, and so “special” is really the opposite of “holy.” Holy things beget holy things. Because holiness shares in the boundless nature of God, there is always more holiness to go around. Holy water consecrates all that it touches as holy. Holy places confer their holiness on the activities that transpire therein. As a bishop consecrates a deacon to the position of priest, or a priest consecrates the romance of bride and groom, holy men may confer their holiness on others. Special things cannot confer their specialness on other things, though. One special thing is naturally at war with other special things. Holiness is an open system, which means a holy thing can make a common thing holy without losing its own holiness. Specialness is a closed system, though, for one thing cannot become special without devouring or absorbing the specialness of another. The goal of a new blockbuster is to make old blockbusters look dull by comparison. The goal of new clothing styles is to make old clothing styles look dowdy by comparison. The goal of a fashionable new church is to make old churches seem dull and conventional by comparison. The goal of new pornography is to make old pornography look chaste by comparison. The goal of the latest KFC sandwich is to make the last KFC sandwich seem flavorless by comparison.”
― Joshua Gibbs, Love What Lasts: How to Save Your Soul From Mediocrity

“If some days are special, others are not. If some places are special, others are not. If some children are special, others are not (though very few people are willing to admit their children are “not special”). Were a pastor to tell his parish that his relationship with his wife was nothing special, but “just a run-of-the-mill, garden-variety sort of marriage,” many congregants would contentiously wonder aloud if he was qualified to give spiritual counsel at all. Nothing is marketed as average or common. Rather, the world exists as a highly competitive marketplace of ideas, people, and products. In such a marketplace, to say a thing is “common” is to admit it is a failure.”
― Joshua Gibbs, Love What Lasts: How to Save Your Soul From Mediocrity

“Apart from a belief in the supernatural, it has become very hard to distinguish the natural from the unnatural. Without Heaven, what is the difference between Hell and Earth? Without God, how can the human and the demonic be told apart? More than two hundred years after the French Revolution, the only people who attack a position or practice as “unnatural” are those who believe in God, as well, because the concept of nature only makes sense as an intermediary between the supernatural and the unnatural.”
― Joshua Gibbs, Love What Lasts: How to Save Your Soul From Mediocrity

“The progressive orientation toward the future also entails great optimism. In the future, there is not yet any sin, no act of debauchery or wickedness has yet occurred, no child has yet been abused, no bomb has yet been dropped, and no wars have been declared. On the other hand, conservatives are oriented toward the past, where numberless acts of evil have occurred. The traditionalist is so impressed by the sheer quantity of vice, corruption, death, and depravity in human history, he is impressed that anything at all has lasted. If a man can find something—anything—that lasts, he must hold on to it with all his might.”
― Joshua Gibbs, Love What Lasts: How to Save Your Soul From Mediocrity

“If it seems strange to think men ever believed the future was behind them and the past before them, take a moment to consider the unchangeable fixedness of the past and the ultimate uncertainty of the future. The past does not move. It sits patiently still for us so we can examine it and in doing so we come to know how and why things usually happen. The study of the past is the study of human limitation but when man is oriented toward the future, he no longer has a world to study, and so he can no longer say what will usually happen. Because they continually face the past and meditate perpetually on the frailty of the world, conservatives are primarily interested in what has worked, even if they have suspicions about how things might be changed to work better. Because progressives face the future, they are interested in what might work better, even if the search for a better future entails burning their inheritance and scrapping the relative stability and happiness of the present.”
― Joshua Gibbs, Love What Lasts: How to Save Your Soul From Mediocrity

“When Modern men want things which their natures rebel against, they suffer and hurt. As opposed to quitting the unnatural things which lead us into psychic and physical pain, scientists have invented drugs which enable us to painlessly continue destroying ourselves. These drugs drive a deep wedge between our bodies and our souls so that the physical torment our bodies and minds undergo cannot reach the place where suffering takes place—the soul. Because the very idea of nature entails the existence of spiritual things, a culture of death cannot fail to grow up wherever nature is rejected. Death is the separation of body and soul; however, because Modern men no longer believe in nature, they have lost the ability to describe what death even is, and so life and death are slowly conflated into the same twisted phenomenon.”
― Joshua Gibbs, Love What Lasts: How to Save Your Soul From Mediocrity

“Enlightenment philosophers claimed the future is in front of us and that every man is free to choose any point on the horizon and run toward it as fast as he can. Where he finally arrives depends entirely on his own preference. For this reason, the rate of cultural change has dramatically accelerated since the French Revolution. Beliefs about political right were no longer staked in nature, which does not change, but in our own wills, which are endlessly fickle. Before the Enlightenment, man understood that nature imposed limits on his will— the desire to grow swan wings was senseless, say— and that fighting these limitations would always prove a losing battle. After the Enlightenment, though, man came to believe his will had the power to coerce his nature into whatever he wanted.”
― Joshua Gibbs, Love What Lasts: How to Save Your Soul From Mediocrity

“Before the Enlightenment, Western man believed the past was in front of him, the future behind him, and that he cautiously walked backwards into it. For this reason, prior to the Enlightenment, cultural change took place very slowly.”
― Joshua Gibbs, Love What Lasts: How to Save Your Soul From Mediocrity

“Provided all the players agree, the game can happily and justly proceed. The same was true in a democracy, for just as a game exists for the pleasure of the players, so does government exist for the pleasure of citizens. As soon as government exists for any other reason than the pleasure of citizens, it has become exploitative.”
― Joshua Gibbs, Love What Lasts: How to Save Your Soul From Mediocrity

“A thing’s nature is an invisible, interior blueprint which subtly instructs and inclines that thing toward happiness, unity, long life, and flourishing.”
― Joshua Gibbs, Love What Lasts: How to Save Your Soul From Mediocrity

“Whether a man is concerned with kings, paupers, plants, pandas, minerals, models, math, production, propulsion, or prostitutes, when he learns what usually happens— what usually works, what usually hurts, what is usually said, what is usually felt— a man has discovered something about that thing’s nature. When a man learns that holding very hot things is usually painful, he learns something about his fleshly nature. When a boy learns that lying to his mother usually leads to fear and remorse, he learns something about his spiritual nature. When we observe that dogs usually become ill after eating chocolate, we learn something about canine nature. Tendency and propensity invariably teach us about nature.”
― Joshua Gibbs, Love What Lasts: How to Save Your Soul From Mediocrity