Kevin Stilley

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Abraham vs. Idolatry

sumerian_idols

What was Abram’s religious understanding prior to hearing and responding to the call of YHWH?  The moon God Sin and his daughter Inanna were the patron deities of Ur and the names given to Abram’s family members seem to reflect homage to this Akkadian/Sumerian pantheon.  Perhaps this is the reason God changes the names of Abram and Sarai after they enter into covenant with Him.

However, consider this account from the Hebrew Talmud;

Once Terah left his son Abram in his shop to sell the idols which he had fashioned.  An old man wished to buy a fresh idol for his birthday.  Abram said: “Here is a new idol, completed this very day.  Do you not think that you are of more importance than a god a day old?”  The greybeard left in confusion, and Abram did not sell the idol.

“You are incompetent as a salesman,” said Terah. “I shall try you out as a priest.”  Abram asked his mother to prepare a tasty dish for the idols.  He then took an axe, smashed all the idols with the exception of the largest one, in whose hand he placed the axe.  When Terah returned, Abram said: “The large idol became incensed at the presumption of the others in wishing to partake of the food before him, and he smashed them.”  Terah was angry at this conduct on the part of his son and informed King Nimrod that he had desecrated the temple.  Nimrod asked Abram: “Why do you not worship my god?”

“Is it an idol of wood or stone that you mean?  If so, how can I worship that which I have seen made before my eyes?” replied Abram.

“Nay, those are for fools.  My god is the consuming fire that gives light and destroys,” said Nimrod.

“But how can fire be god if water quenches it?” asked Abram.

“Then worship water,” commanded the king.

“But a cloud is mightier, carrying water where it wills.”

“Worship the cloud then.”

“But the wind is stronger, for it disperses the clouds.”

“Then worship wind.”

“But man withstands wind, and I cannot worship man because death overcomes him.”

“I still maintain that fire is god,” said Nimrod.  “I shall hurl you into a cauldron of fire, and then you may be saved by whatever you worship as god.”

Abram was thrown to the flames, but they harmed him not.  Nevertheless Nimrod was stubborn in his idolatry.

(Bereshit Rabbah, 38,19)

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Success – select quotes

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And the good fairy said, I won’t leave you money or pretty dresses but I will leave you the spirit to seek your fortune from your own efforts.
~ Louisa May Alcott, from a short story read by Jo in Little Women

He who is silent is forgotten; he who does not advance falls back; he who stops is overwhelmed; out distanced, crushed; he who ceases to grow becomes smaller; he who leaves off, gives up; the condition of standing still is the beginning of the end.
~ Henri Frédéric Amiel

Most successful men have not achieved their distinction by having some new talent or opportunity presented to them. They have developed the opportunity that was at hand.
~ Bruce Barton

Success comes from taking the hand you were dealt and using it to the very best of your ability.
~ Ty Boyd

To find his place and fill it is success for a man.
~ Phillips Brooks

Success is a state of mind. If you want success, start thinking of yourself as a success.
~ Joyce Brothers

One man has enthusiasm for 30 minutes, another for 30 days, but it is the man who has it for 30 years who makes a success of his life.
~ Edward Butler

It takes 20 years to make an overnight success.
~ Eddie Cantor

People who are unable to motivate themselves must be content with mediocrity, no matter how impressive their other talents.
~ Andrew Carnegie

Success is never final; failure is never fatal.
~ Winston Churchill

Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.
~ Sir Winston Churchill

Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan “press on” has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.
~ Calvin Coolidge

I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.
~ Bill Cosby

The secret of success is constancy of purpose.
~ Benjamin Disraeli

Through perseverance many people win success out of what seemed destined to be certain failure.
~ Benjamin Disraeli

What’s money? A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do.
~ Bob Dylan

Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.
~ Albert Einstein

Try not to become a man of success but rather to become a man of value.
~ Albert Einstein

If A equal success, then the formula is A equals X plus Y and Z, with X being work, Y play, and Z keeping your mouth shut.
~ Albert Einstein

To laugh often and much; To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

If a man write a better book, preach a better sermon, or make a better mouse-trap than his neighbor, tho’ he build his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nature magically suits a man to his fortunes, by making them the fruit of his character.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, Conduct of Life

Success is feminine and like a woman; if you cringe before her she will override you. So the way to treat her is to show her the back of your hand. Then maybe she will do the crawling.
~ William Faulkner

Keep these concepts in mind: You’ve failed many times, although you don’t remember. You fell down the first time you tried to walk. You almost drowned the first time you tried to swim. . . . Don’t worry about failure. My suggestion to each of you: Worry about the chances you miss when you don’t even try.
~ Sherman Finesilver

Success as I see it, is a result, not a goal.
~ Gustave Flaubert

If you wish in this world to advance, your merits you’re bound to enhance; You must stir it and stump it, and blow your own trumpet, or trust me, you haven’t a chance.
~ W. S. Gilbert

Success is always temporary. When all is said and done, the only thing you’ll have left is your character.
~ Vince Gill

The secret of success is sincerity. Once you can fake that you’ve got it made.
~ Jean Giraudoux

Seize this very minute;
What you can do, or dream you can, begin it;
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.
Only engage and the mind grows heated;
Begin and then the work will be completed.
~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Succeeding in business and failing at home is a cop-out. For no success in the workplace will ever make up for failure at home.
~ Howard Hendricks

I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have.
~ Thomas Jefferson

I find that he is happiest of whom the world says least, good or bad.
~ Thomas Jefferson

To succeed, it is necessary to accept the world as it is — and rise above it.
~ Michael Korda

To succeed is nothing, it is an accident. But to feel no doubts about oneself is something very different, it is character.
~ Marie Leneru

If at first you don’t succeed, find out if the loser gets anything.
~ Bill Lyon

The only certain means of success is to render more and better service than is expected of you, no matter what your task may be.
~ Og Mandino

The common idea that success spoils people by making them vain, egotistic and self-complacent is erroneous; on the contrary, it makes them, for the most part, humble, tolerant, and kind. Failure makes people bitter and cruel.
~ W. Somerset Maugham

Real success is finding your lifework in the work that you love.
~ David McCullough

There is only one success – to be able to spend your life in your own way.
~ Christopher Morley

Once you replace negative thoughts with positive ones, you’ll start having positive results.
~ Willie Nelson

Success is simply a matter of luck. Ask any failure.
~ Earl Nightingale

I attribute my success to this: I never gave or took an excuse.
~ Florence Nightingale

Success without honor is an unseasoned dish; it will satisfy your hunger, but won’t taste good.
~ Joe Paterno

Who begins too much accomplishes little.
~ German Proverb

Unless you enter the tiger’s den, you cannot take the cubs.
~ Old Japanese Proverb

If your success is not on your own terms, if it looks good to the world but does not feel good in your heart, it is not success at all.
~ Anna Quindlen

Success is the study of the Obvious.Everyone should take Obvious 1 and Obvious 2 in school.
~ Jim Rohn

As individuals we live cooperatively, and, to the best of our ability, serve the community in which we live. Our own success, to be real, must contribute to the success of others.
~ Eleanor Roosevelt

The barrier (to) success is not something which exists in the real world; it is composed purely and simply of doubts about ability.
~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

The most important single ingredient in the formula of success is knowing how to get along with people.
~ Theodore Roosevelt

Success and failure. We think of them as opposites, but they’re really not. They’re companions – the hero and the sidekick.
~ Laurence Shames

Put your heart, mind, intellect and soul even to your smallest acts. This is the secret to success.
~ Swami Sivananda

Success comes to the man who grits his teeth, squares his jaw and says, “There is a way for me and, by jingo, I’ll find it.
~ Clifford Sloan

He has achieved success who has lived well, laughed often, and loved much.
~ Bessie A. Stanley

Women will never be as successful as men because they have no wives to advise them.
~ Dick Van Dyke

I have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has had to overcome while trying to succeed.
~ Booker T. Washington

If you want to double your success rate, double your failure rate.
~ Thomas Watson

Would you like me to give you a formula for success? It’s quite simple, really. Double your rate of failure. You are thinking of failure as the enemy of success. But it isn’t at all. You can be discouraged by failure or you can learn from it, So go ahead and make mistakes. Make all you can. Because remember that’s where you will find success.
~ Thomas J. Watson

Success and failure are equally disastrous.
~ Tennessee Williams

I couldn’t wait for success, so I went ahead without it.
~ Jonathan Winters

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If you think you are beaten, you are:
If you think you dare not, you don’t.
If, you like to win but think you can’t
It’s almost a cinch you won’t.

If you think you’ll lose, you’re lost:
For out in the world we find
Success begins with a fellow’s will:
It’s all in the state of mind.

If you think you are outclassed, you are:
You’ve got to think high to rise,
You’ve got to be sure of yourself before
You can ever win a prize.

Life’s battles don’t always go
To the stronger or faster man;
But soon or late the man who wins
Is the man who thinks he can.
~ Anonymous

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Voltaire – select quotes

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A witty saying proves nothing.

Another century and there will not be a Bible on earth!

Books rule the world, or at least those nations which have a written language; the others do not matter.

Despite the enormous quantity of books, how few people read! And if one reads profitably, one would realize how much stupid stuff the vulgar herd is content to swallow every day.

Every man is guilty of all the good he didn’t do.

God created woman only to tame mankind.

History consists of a series of accumulated imaginative inventions.

History is filled with the sound of silken slippers going downstairs and wooden shoes coming up.

[History is] little else than a long succession of useless cruelties.

Let us read, and let us dance; these two amusements will never do any harm to the world.

Nothing enfranchises like education.

Originality is nothing but judicious imitation.

So long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men.

The art of medicine consists of amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.

The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from out neighbors, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all.

There is a wide difference between speaking to deceive, and being silent to be impenetrable.

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Effective Communication – select quotes

What we’ve got here is failure to communicate.
~ Strother Martin playing the Captain in the movie Cool Hand Luke

This communicating of a man’s self to his friend works two contrary effects, for it redoubleth joys, and cutteth griefs in half.
~ Francis Bacon

It was impossible to get a conversation going, everybody was talking too much.”
~ Yogi Berra

Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret.
~ Ambrose Bierce

Self-expression must pass into communication for its fulfillment.
~ Pearl S. Buck

They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel.
~ Carl W. Buechner

Two monologues do not make a dialogue.
~ Jeff Daly

One can say everything best over a meal.
~ George Eliot in Adam Bede

The eloquent man is he who is no beautiful speaker, but who is inwardly and desperately drunk with a certain belief.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

The colossal misunderstanding of our time is the assumption that insight will work with people who are unmotivated to change. Communication does not depend on syntax, or eloquence, or rhetoric, or articulation but on the emotional context in which the message is being heard. People can only hear you when they are moving toward you, and they are not likely to when your words are pursuing them. Even the choicest words lose their power when they are used to overpower. Attitudes are the real figures of speech.
~ Edwin H. Friedman

Many attempts to communicate are nullified by saying too much.
~ Robert Greenleaf

It is the province of knowledge to speak, and it is the privilege of wisdom to listen.
~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

English is the perfect language for preachers because it allows you to talk until you think of what to say.
~ Garrison Keillor.

I remind myself every morning: Nothing I say this day will teach me anything. So if I’m going to learn, I must do it by listening.
~ Larry King

Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.
~ Rudyard Kipling

Good communication is as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after.
~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Information is giving out; communication is getting through.
~ John C. Maxwell

No man is exempt from saying silly things; the mischief is to say them deliberately.
~ Montaigne

“And people laugh at me because I use big words. But if you have big ideas you have to use big words to express them, haven’t you?”
~ Anne in L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables

As a performer there’s nothing better than moments where you feel that you have the option—within the given text—to do exactly as you want, where you’re not worried about what you look like or whether you’ve warmed up enough. You just seem to be involved in a pure expression which is completely appropriate.
~ Mark Morris in “Marvelous Mark Morris,” BBC Music Magazine, special issue, Ballet from Ritual to Romance (1996), page 64

When you forget yourself and your fear, when you get beyond self-consciousness because your mind is thinking bout what you are trying to communicate, you become a better communicator.
~ Peggy Noonan, in Simply Speaking (NY: HarperCollins, 1998), page 8

One kind word can warm three winter months.
~ Japanese proverb

The most basic and powerful way to connect to another person is to listen. Just listen. Perhaps the most important thing we ever give each other is our attention…. A loving silence often has far more power to heal and to connect than the most well-intentioned words.
~ Rachel Naomi Remen

Brevity is the soul of wit.
~ William Shakespeare

He draweth out the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument.
~ William Shakespeare in Love’s Labour’s Lost

The silence often of pure innocence
Persuades when speaking fails.
~ William Shakespeare in The Winter’s Tale

Remember that you are a human being with a soul and the divine gift of articulate speech: that your native language is the language of Shakespeare and Milton and The Bible; and don’t sit there crooning like a bilious pigeon.
~ Character in George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion

The greatest problem in communication is the illusion that it has been accomplished.
~ George Bernard Shaw

The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.
~ Mark Twain

If I am to speak ten minutes, I need a week for preparation; if fifteen minutes, three days; if half an hour, two days; if an hour, I am ready now.
~ Woodrow Wilson

A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in picture of silver.
~ Bible, Proverbs 25:11

How lovely on the mountains Are the feet of him who brings good news, Who announces peace And brings good news of happiness, Who announces salvation, And says to Zion, “Your God reigns!”
~ Bible, Isaiah 52:7

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Pride – select quotes

Nothing disciplines the inordinate desires of the flesh like service, and nothing transforms the desires of the flesh like serving in hiddenness. The flesh whines agains service but screams against hidden service. It strains and pulls for honor and recognition. It will devise subtle, religiously acceptable means to call attention to the service rendered. If we stoutly refuse to give in to this lust of the flesh, we crucify it. Every time we crucify the flesh, we crucify our pride and arrogance.
~ Richard Foster, in Celebration of Discipline (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1978) page 130.

Pride is to character, like the attic to the house—the highest part, and generally the most empty.
~ Sydney Howard Gay

Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man. We say that people are proud of being rich, or clever, or good-looking, but they are not. They are proud of being richer, or cleverer, or better-looking than others. If every one else became equally rich, or clever, or good-looking there would be nothing to be proud about. It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest.”
~ C.S. Lewis, in Mere Christianity, NY: Touchstone, Simon & Schuster, 1996, page 110

The truth is this—pride must die in you, or nothing of heaven can live in you.
~ Andrew Murray

Pride is at the bottom of all great mistakes.
~ John Ruskin

Man was created on the sixth day.  If ever he is filled with pride, it can be said to him: A flea preceded thee in creation.
~ Talmud, Sanhedrin, 37

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Research Assistance Request

On occasion I have seen the following quote attributed to Plato, but I think it is an error that may have begun with a mis-attribution in Elbert Hubbard’s Scrapbook (published in 1923) and which has been passed down through the generations :

“A bad man is wretched amidst every earthly advantage: a good man—troubled on every side, yet not distressed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed.”

I have read through the whole corpus of Plato’s dialogues without coming across anything similar. Further, an internet search turns up nothing of substance.

The quote is almost identical to what we find in Paul’s epistle to the Corinthians;

We are hard-pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed— (2 Corinthians 4:8-9)

I suspect that Hubbard misunderstood a footnote in Ebenezer Cobham Brewer’s A Guide to Grecian History, Mythology and Literature which was published in 1859 (Period IV Appendix, Section 2.4, page 356). While trying to explain Plato’s moral philosophy Brewer conflated a description of Plato’s anthropology with a quote from Scripture.

I would be very appreciative if anyone can provide any related information.

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Postmodernism – select quotes

All statements are false.
~ Gorgias

Sooner or later politics will be faced with the task of finding a new postmodern face. A politician must become a person again, someone who trusts not only scientific representation and analysis of the world, but also the world itself. He must believe not only in sociological statistics but also in real people. He must trust not only an objective interpretation of reality, but also his own soul; no only an adopted ideology, but also his own thoughts; not only the summary reports he receives each morning, but also his own feelings.
~ Vaclav Havel, in a speech at the World Economic Forum in 1995

Post-modernism means the end of a single world view, and by extension, a “war on totality,” a resistance to single explanations, a respect for difference and a celebration of the regional, local and particular.
~ Charles Jencks, in The Post-Modern Reader, page 12

Homo mensura.
~ Protagoras

Marilyn [Monroe] once was asked if she believed in God.  With a flirtatious grin she said, “I just believe in everything—a little bit.” This “Monroe doctrine” might be the defining doctrine of postmodern times.
~ in Is Jesus the Only Way?, page 15

Postmodernism defies definition because we’re right in the middle of a cultural phenomenon still unfolding before us—it’s a moving target.
~ Peter Sacks, in Generation X Goes To College, page 116.

But perhaps the best candidate for postmodernity’s byword is given us by Nirvana and Kurt Cobain, the grunge rockers many observers rightly contend are emblematic of Generation X culture: “Here we are now / entertain us,” says a line from “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” a lyric that hits upon the domination of entertainment values in contemporary culture, spanning politics, education, and even religious institutions. Indeed, one might modify Nirvana’s lyric along the lines of Descartes to say, “I am entertained, therefore I am.”
~ Peter Sacks, Generation X Goes To College, page 118

Generation X is not a thing; it’s the lack of a thing, the lack of a positive theory, or an opinion about anything. They don’t believe in anything, and everything is up for grabs.
~ Lloyd, quoted by Peter Sacks, Generation X Goes To College, page 139

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The Presence of God

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They say that God is everywhere, and yet we always think of Him as somewhat of a recluse.
~ Emily Dickinson

Every happening, great and small, is a parable whereby God speaks to us, and the art of life is to get the message.
~ Malcolm Muggeridge

A matron said to Rabbi Jose: “My god is greater than thine.  When God revealed Himself to Moses, he did not flee, but when my god, the serpent, appeared there Moses ran away.”  The Rabbi replied: “Moses could escape from thy god by retreating a few steps, but where could he have escaped from my God?”
~ Talmud, Shemot Rabbah, 3

The Bible is not an end in itself, but a means to bring men to an intimate and satisfying knowledge of God, that they may enter into Him, that they may delight in His Presence, may taste and know the inner sweetness of the very God Himself in the core and center of their hearts.
~ A. W. Tozer

Can any hide himself in secret places that I shall not see him? saith the Lord. Do not I fill heaven and earth?
–Jeremiah 23:24

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Faith – select quotes

Faith is not trying to believe something regardless of the evidence; faith is daring something regardless of the consequences.
~ Sherwood Eddy

I prayed for faith, and thought that some day faith would come down and strike me like lightning. But faith did not seem to come. One day I read in the tenth chapter of Romans, “Now faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.” I had closed my Bible, and prayed for faith. I now opened my Bible, and began to study, and faith has been growing ever since.
~ Dwight L Moody

Faith isn’t faith until it’s all you’re holding on to.
~ Patrick Overton

Faith is the Christian’s foundation, hope is his anchor, death is his harbor, Christ is his pilot and Heaven is his country.
~ Jeremy Taylor

Faith today is treated as something that only should make us different, not that actually does or can make us different. In reality we vainly struggle against the evils of this world, waiting to die and go to heaven. Somehow we’ve gotten the idea that the essence of faith is entirely a mental and inward thing.
~ Dallas Willard

I believe in the sun, even when it’s not shining. And I believe in love, even when I don’t feel it. I
believe in God, even when he’s silent.
~ Inscription on the wall in Nazi Germany

Call on God, but row away from the rocks.
~ Indian proverb

If it is true that you know how to describe faith, it only proves that you are a poet, and if you can do it well, it proves that you are a good poet; but this is far from proving that you are a believer. Perhaps you can also weep in describing faith, that would prove then that you are a good actor.
~ Soren Kierkegaard, in For Self-Examination

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Charles Haddon Spurgeon – select quotes

spurgeonThere is something exceedingly improving to the mind in a contemplation of the Divinity. It is a subject so vast, that all our thoughts are lost in its immensity; so deep, that our pride is drowned in its infinity. . . . No subject of contemplation will tend more to humble the mind, than thoughts of God. . . . But while the subject humbles the mind, it also expands it. . . . nothing will so enlarge the intellect, nothing so magnify the whole soul of man, as a devout, earnest, continued investigation of the great subject of the Deity.
~ C. H. Spurgeon, quoted by J.I. Packer in Knowing God

Reading makes the full man, and it is the full man who alone can overflow for the profit of others.
~ in Commenting and Commentaries, 24; quoted in Nettles, Living by Revealed Truth, 158

By perseverance the snail reached the ark.
~ from Salt-Cellars

An ill life will effectually drown the voice of the most eloquent ministry.

Anxiety does not empty tomorrow of its sorrows, but only empties today of its strength.

As sure as God puts His children in the furnace He will be in the furnace with them.

Be masters of your Bibles, brethren, whatever other works you have not searched, be at home with the writings of the prophets and apostles.

Faith is reason at rest in God.

Fiery trials make golden Christians.

Have your heart right with Christ, and he will visit you often, and so turn weekdays into Sundays, meals into sacraments, homes into temples, and earth into heaven.

I do not look for any other means of converting men beyond the simple preaching of the Gospel and the opening of men’s ears to hear it.

If any of you should ask me for an epitome of the Christian religion, I should say that it is in one word — prayer.

It were a sad dishonour to a child of God to be the world’s favourite. It is a very ill omen to hear a wicked world clap its hands and shout ‘Well done’ to the Christian man.

Nobody ever outgrows Scripture; the Book widens and deepens with our years.

Of two evils choose neither.

Our outer life is the test of our inner life; and if the outer life be not purified, rest assured the heart is not changed.

Quietude, which some men cannot abide because it reveals their inward poverty, is as a palace of cedar to the wise, for along its hallowed courts the King in His beauty deigns to walk.

Some people like to read so many [Bible] chapters every day. I would not dissuade them from the practice, but I would rather lay my soul asoak in half a dozen verses all day than rinse my hand in several chapters. Oh, to be bathed in a text of Scripture, and to let it be sucked up in your very soul, till it saturates your heart!

The ministry is a matter which wears the brain and strains the heart, and drains out the life of a man if he attends to it as he should.

Train up a child in the way he should go–but be sure you go that way yourself.

We should pray when we are in a praying mood, for it would be sinful to neglect so fair an opportunity. We should pray when we are not in a proper mood, for it would be dangerous to remain in so unhealthy a condition.

Wisdom is the right use of knowledge. To know is not to be wise. Many men know a great deal, and are all the greater fools for it. There is no fool so great a fool as a knowing fool. But to know how to use knowledge is to have wisdom.

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