The truth Fear tells is not much better than her lies.
Hell The one principle of hell is – “I am my own!
She did not cry long, however, for she was as brave as could be expected of a princess her age.
Why are all reflections lovelier than what we call reality? – not so grand or so strong, it may be, but always lovelier? Fair as is the gliding sloop on the shining sea, the wavering, trembling, unresting sail below is fairer still... All mirrors are magic mirrors. The commonest room is a room in a poem when I turn to the glass...
I maun hae buiks. I wad get the newspapers whiles, but no aften, for they’re a sair loss o’ precious time. Ye see they tell ye things afore they’re sure, an’ ye hae to spen’ yer time the day readin’ what ye’ll hae to spen’ yer time the morn readin’ oot again; an’ ye may as weel bide till the thing’s sattled a wee.
Christ is our righteousness, not that we should escape punishment, still less escape being righteous, but as the live potent creator of righteousness in us, so that we, with our wills receiving His spirit, shall like Him resist unto blood, striving against sin.
I may love him, I may love him, for he is a man, and I am only a beech-tree.
By obeying one learns how to obey.
The little boy was just as much one of God’s messengers as if he had been an angel with a flaming sword, going out to fight the devil. The devil he had to fight just then was Misery.
For He regards men not as they are merely, but as they shall be; not as they shall be merely, but as they are now growing, or capable of growing, toward that image after which He made them that they might grow to it. Therefore a thousand stages, each in itself all but valueless, are of inestimable worth as the necessary and connected gradations of an infinite progress. A condition which of declension would indicate a devil, may of growth indicate a saint.
I cannot be perfect; it is hopeless; and He does not expect it.” – It would be more honest if he said, “I do not want to be perfect: I am content to be saved.” Such as he do not care for being perfect as their Father in heaven is perfect, but for being what they called saved.
No One Loves Because He Sees Why Where a man does not love, the not-loving must seem rational. For no one loves because he sees why, but because he loves. No human reason can be given for the highest necessity of divinely created existence. For reasons are always from above downward.
No man is condemned for anything he has done: he is condemned for continuing to do wrong. He is condemned for not coming out of the darkness, for not coming to the light.
The minister was an honest man so far as he knew himself and honesty, and did not relish this form of submission. But he did not ask himself where was the difference between accepting the word of man and accepting man’s explanation of the word of God!
Poverty will not make a man worthless – he may be worth a great deal more when he is poor than he was when he was rich; but dishonesty goes very far indeed to make a man of no value – a thing to be thrown out in the dust-hole of the creation, like a bit of a broken basin, or a dirty rag.
I forced my way to the brink, stepped into the boat, pushed it, with the help of the tree-branches, out into the stream, lay down in the bottom, and let my boat and me float whither the stream would carry us.
Show me the person ready to step from any, let it be the narrowest, sect of Christian Pharisees into a freer and holier air, and I shall look to find in that person the one of that sect who, in the midst of its darkness and selfish worldliness, mistaken for holiness, has been living a life more obedient than the rest.
Mary was one who possessed power over her own spirit – rare gift, given to none but those who do something toward the taking of it. She was able in no small measure to order her own thoughts. Without any theory of self-rule, she yet ruled her Self. She was not one to slip about in the saddle, or let go the reins for a kick and a plunge or two. There was the thing that should be, and the thing that should not be; the thing that was reasonable, and the thing that was absurd.
We are and remain such creeping Christians, because we look at ourselves and not at Christ;.
The things that come out of a man are they that defile him, and to get rid of them a man must go into himself, be a convict, and scrub the floor of his cell.