Classic and contemporary excerpts.
Later never comes
For weeks after my last operation [for cancer]—frail and without energy, sleeping 10 hours—I looked in my house at all the books I had not read and wept for my inability to read them. Or I looked at great books I had read too quickly in my avidity—telling myself I would return to them later. There is never a later, but for most of my life I have believed in later.
—Donald Hall in Life Work
Humility defined
To be humble is to be so sure of one’s self and one’s mission that one can forgo calling excessive attention to one’s self and status. And even more pointedly, to be humble is to revel in the accomplishment or potential of others, especially those with whom one identifies and to whom one is linked organically …
Humility means two things.
One, a capacity for self-criticism.…
The second feature is allowing others to shine, affirming others, empowering and enabling others. Those who lack humility are dogmatic and egotistical. That masks a deep sense of insecurity. They feel the success of others is at the expense of their own fame and glory. If criticism is put forward, they are not able to respond to it. And this produces, of course, an authoritarian sensibility.
—Cornel West in dialog with bell hooks in The Other Side (Mar.–Apr. 1992)
Gold or ashes?
A realist is an idealist who has gone through the fire and been purified. A skeptic is an idealist who has gone through the fire and been burned.
—Warren W. Wiersbe in “The Patented Preacher” (LEADERSHIP Journal, Winter 1994)
No joy in “pleasure”
Living for his own pleasure is the least pleasurable thing a man can do; if his neighbors don’t kill him in disgust, he will die slowly of boredom and lovelessness.
—Joy Davidman in Smoke on the Mountain
Knowing God
Now, as always, God [discloses] Himself to “babes” and hides Himself in thick darkness from the wise and the prudent. We must simplify our approach to Him. We must strip down to essentials (and they will be found to be blessedly few). We must put away all effort to impress, and come with the guileless candor of childhood. If we do this, without doubt God will quickly respond.
—A. W. Tozer in The Pursuit of God
Of trials and goals
Those who make comfort the great subject of their preaching seem to mistake the end of their ministry. Holiness is the great end. There must be a struggle and trial here. Comfort is a cordial, but no one drinks cordials from morning to night.
—John Henry Newman, quoted in America (April 3, 1993)
The time of our lives
Time is life—nothing more, nothing less. The way you spend your hours and your days is the way you spend your life.
—John Boykin in The Gospel of Coincidence
