MY CHILD, from your youth choose discipline, and when you have gray hair you will still find wisdom.Sirach 6:8
WE ARE, in truth, more than half what we are by imitation. The great point is to choose good models and to study them with care.Lord Chesterfield, Lord Chesterfield’s Worldly Wisdom
WHEN YOU were born, you cried and the world rejoiced. Live your life in such a way so that when you die, the world cries and you rejoice.Indian Proverb
WE MOSTLY SPEND [our] lives conjugating three verbs: to Want, to Have, and to Do … forgetting that none of these verbs have any ultimate significance, except so far as they are transcended by and included in the fundamental verb, to Be.Evelyn Underhill, The Spiritual Life
THERE IS no point in regretting any part of the past. The past can’t now be altered, the future has yet to be lived, and consciously to experience every moment of the present is the only way to gain at least the illusion of immortality.P. D. James, Time to Be in Earnest: A Fragment of Autobiography
THE WILL can do all—except one thing: undo that which it has done. The power of undoing is of another order: of the order of grace, if you will. It is a miracle.Vladimir Jankélévitch, Forgiveness
IF YOU were doomed to live the same life over and over again for eternity, would you choose the life you are living now? The question is interesting enough, but I’ve always thought the point of asking it is really the unspoken, potentially devastating follow-up question. That is, if the answer is no, then why are you living the life you are living now? Stop making excuses, and do something about it.William Alexander The $64 Tomato
THE CROSS is always ready and waits for you everywhere. You cannot escape it no matter where you run, for wherever you go you are burdened with yourself. Wherever you go, there you are.Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ
LOVE in its simplicity is the unsyncopated walking bass of the Christian life. Love just keeps thumping along, marking the rhythm of all that’s good in human life, walking through hell and high water, not stupidly denying the destruction inherent in either, but walking on, embraced by the vision of a child at play.John W. Vannorsdall, in Weavings
WE REGARD falling from God’s friendship as the only thing dreadful and we consider becoming God’s friend the only thing worthy of honor and desire. This … is the perfection of life.St. Gregory of Nyssa, quoted in Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home
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