Richard Hooker > Quotes

“We act insane, because if we didn't, we would most surely become insane.
- Hawkeye”
― Richard Hooker, MASH: A Novel about Three Army Doctors

“change is not made without inconvenience, even from worse to better.”
― Richard Hooker

“When Radar O'Reilly, just out of high school, left Ottumwa, Iowa, and enlisted in the United States Army it was with the express purpose of making a career of the Signal Corps.”
― Richard Hooker, MASH: A Novel about Three Army Doctors

“You know who we been living with for the past week? We been living with the only man in history who ever took a piece in the ladies’ can of a Boston & Maine train. When the conductor caught him in there with his Winter Carnival date she screamed, ‘He trapped me!’ and that’s how he got his name. This is the famous Trapper John. God, Trapper, I speak for the Duke as well as myself when I say it’s an honor to have you with us. Have a martini, Trapper.”
― Richard Hooker, MASH: A Novel About Three Army Doctors

“He might make it, even if all I really did was hit him in the head with an axe.”
― Richard Hooker, MASH: A Novel About Three Army Doctors

“A good anesthesiologist is essential to any important surgical effort. Without one, the greatest surgeon in the world is helpless. With one, relatively untalented surgeons can look good.”
― Richard Hooker, MASH: A Novel About Three Army Doctors

“Such is our human tendency, that whenever we admire somebody for their achievements in great things, it is hard to persuade us that they err in anything.”
― Richard Hooker, Radicalism: When Reform Becomes Revolution: The Preface to Hooker's Laws: A Modernization

“Normal people go crazy in this place.”
― Richard Hooker, MASH: A Novel about Three Army Doctors

“Look!" Hawkeye said.
Duke looked where Hawkeye was pointing. In one corner, kneeling on the dirt floor with his elbows on his cot, a Bible in front of him, his lips moving slowly, and oblivious to all about him, was Major Jonathan Hobson.
"Jesus," Hawkeye said.
"It don't look like Him," Duke said.”
― Richard Hooker, MASH: A Novel about Three Army Doctors

“I know in whom I have believed; I am not ignorant whose precious blood has been shed for me; I have a Shepherd full of kindness, full of care, and full of power: unto him I commit myself. His own finger hath engraven this sentence on the tables of my heart: "Satan hath desired to winnow thee as wheat, but I have prayed that thy faith fail not." Therefore, the assurance of my hope I will labour to keep as a jewel unto the end, and by labour, through the gracious mediation of his prayer, I shall keep it.”
― Richard Hooker

“THE FIRST means that nature provides for us to distinguish between good and evil, in laws as in everything else, is our own good judgment. Paul confirms this when he says “I speak as to wise men; judge ye what I say” (1 Cor. 10:15), or when he says later “Judge ye in yourselves. Is it seemly that a woman pray unto God unveiled?” (1 Cor. 11:13). Our Savior Himself required that the Jews exercise this faculty (Luke 12:56, 57), and Scripture commends the Bereans for it (Acts 17:11). Whatever we do, if our own secret judgment does not consent to it, the same is sin, even if it be permissible, and therefore St. Paul says, “Let each man be fully assured in his own mind” (Rom. 14:5).”
― Richard Hooker, The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity In Modern English, Vol. 1

“We all make complaint of the iniquity of our times: not unjustly; for the days are evil. But compare them with those times wherein there were no civil societies . . . and we have surely good cause to think that Goth hath blessed up exceedingly, and hath made us behold most happy days.”
― Richard Hooker, Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, the Fifth Book

“We all make complaint of the iniquity of our times: not unjustly; for the days are evil. But compare them with those times wherein there were no civil societies, . . . and we have surely good cause to think that Goth hath blessed up exceedingly, and hath made us behold most happy days.”
― Richard Hooker, Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, the Fifth Book;

“If there be any feeding of Christ, any drop of heavenly dew, or any spark of God's good Spirit within you, stir it up; be careful to build and edify, first yourselves, and then your flocks in this most holy faith. I say, first yourselves; for he who will set the hearts of other men on fire with the love of Christ, must himself burn with love. It is want of faith in ourselves, my brethren, which makes us retchless (careless) in building others. We forsake the Lord's inheritance, and feed it not. What is the reason of this? Our own desires are settled where they should not be. We ourselves are like those women who have a longing to eat coals, and lime, and filth: we are fed, some with honour, some with ease, some with wealth: the gospel waxeth loathsome and unpleasant in our taste: how should we then have a care to feed others with that which we cannot fancy ourselves? If faith wax cold and slender in the heart of the prophet, it will soon perish from the ears of the people. (Sermon on part of St Jude's Epistle, p. 552)”
― Richard Hooker

“if he can have the patient under deep and controlled anesthesia when it is needed and awake or nearly so at the end of the operation”
― Richard Hooker, M*A*S*H: A Novel About Three Army Doctors

“When they awakened at four o'clock in the afternoon, all was quiet. Duke peeked out the door and closed it quickly.
'What do the initials M.P. stand for?' he inquired.
'Shore Patrol,' answered Trapper John.”
― Richard Hooker, MASH: A Novel about Three Army Doctors

“If our hands did never offer violence to our brethren, a bloody thought doth prove us murderers before him.[Cf Mt 5:21f] If we had never opened our mouths to utter any scandalous, offensive, or hurtful word, the cry of our secret cogitations is heard in the ears of God. If we did not commit the evils which we do daily and hourly, either in deeds, words, or thoughts, yet in the good things which we do how many defects are there intermingled! (A Learned Discourse on Justification, p. 8)”
― Richard Hooker

“God, in that which is done, respecteth specially the mind and intention of the doer. Cut off then all those things wherein we have regarded our own glory, those things which we do to please men or to satisfy our own liking, those things which we do with any by-respect [that is, with any secondary or ulterior motive], not sincerely and purely for the love of God, and a small score will serve for the number of our righteous deeds. Let the holiest and best thing that we do be considered: we are never better affected unto God than when we pray; yet when we pray how are our affections many times distracted! How little reverence do we show to the grand majesty of that God unto whom we speak! How little remorse of our own miseries! How little taste of the sweet influence of his tender mercy do we feel! Are we not as unwilling many times to begin, and as glad to make an end, as if God in saying "Call upon me" had set us a very burdensome task? (A Learned Discourse on Justification, p. 8)”
― Richard Hooker

“They saw that to live by one man’s will became the cause of all men’s misery. This made them write laws in which men might know what their duties were beforehand, as well as the penalties for failing to fulfill them. In the case of things either obviously good or evil, about which everyone agrees, there is no need for new laws. Therefore, the first sort of law concerns things that are naturally good or evil, but are not readily discerned by every man’s judgment without deeper consideration. Since it is possible to make a mistake in such considerations, many men would remain ignorant of their duties, or else pretend ignorance, which they cannot do once their duties have been defined by law.”
― Richard Hooker, The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity In Modern English, Vol. 1

“It is a childish cavil wherewith in the matter of justification our adversaries do so greatly please themselves, exclaiming that we tread all Christian virtues under our feet and require nothing in Christians but faith, because we teach that faith alone justifieth; whereas by this speech we never meant to exclude either hope and charity from being always joined as inseparable mates with faith in the man that is justified, or works from being added as necessary duties, required at the hands of every justified man, but to show that faith is the only hand which putteth on Christ unto justification, and Christ the only garment which, being so put on, covereth the shame of our defiled natures, hideth the imperfections of our works, preserveth us blameless in the sight of God, before whom otherwise the very weakness of our faith were cause sufficient to make us culpable, yea, to shut us out from the kingdom of heaven, where nothing that is not absolute can enter.”
― Richard Hooker

“Therefore, we define a Law as that which determines what kind of work each thing should do, how its power should be restrained, and what form its work should take. No end could ever be reached unless the means by which it was reached were regular; that is to say, unless the means were suitable, fitting, and appropriate to their end according to a principle, rule, or law. This is true in the first place even of the workings of God Himself.”
― Richard Hooker, The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity In Modern English, Vol. 1

“We all make complaint of the iniquity of our times: not unjustly, for the days are evil. But compare them with those times wherein there were no civil societies, . . . and we have surely good cause to think that Goth hath blessed up exceedingly, and hath made us behold most happy days.”
― Richard Hooker

“I know in whom I have believed; I am not ignorant whose precious blood has been shed for me; I have a Shepherd full of kindness, full of care, and full of power: unto him I commit myself. His own finger hath engraven this sentence on the tables of my heart: "Satan hath desired to winnow thee as wheat, but I have prayed that thy faith fail not." Therefore, the assurance of my hope I will labour to keep as a jewel unto the end, and by labour, through the gracious mediation of his prayer, I shall keep it. (Sermon of the Certainty and Perpetuity of Faith in the Elect, p. 532)”
― Richard Hooker

“we need only note those operations that begin and continue by the voluntary choice of God who has eternally decreed when and how they should be, and that this eternal decree is what we call an eternal law.”
― Richard Hooker, The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity In Modern English, Vol. 1

“[T]he righteousness wherein we must be found, if we will be justified, is not our own: therefore we cannot be justified by any inherent quality. Christ hath merited righteousness for as many as are found in him. In him God findeth us, if we be faithful, for by faith we are incorporated into him.

Then, although in ourselves we be altogether sinful and unrighteous, yet even the man who in himself is impious, full of iniquity, full of sin, him being found in Christ through faith, and having his sin in hatred through repentance, him God beholdeth with a gracious eye, putteth away his sin by not imputing it, taketh quite away the punishment due thereunto, by pardoning it, and accepteth him in Jesus Christ as perfectly righteous, as if he had fulfilled all that is commanded him in the law: shall I say more perfectly righteous than if himself had fulfilled the whole law? I must take heed what I say; but the Apostle saith, "God made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. [2 Cor 5:21] Such we are in the sight of God the Father as is the very Son of God himself. Let it be counted folly, or phrensy, or fury, or whatsoever. It is our wisdom and our comfort; we care for no knowledge in the world but this: that man hath sinned and God hath suffered; that God hath made himself the sin of men, and that men are made the righteousness of God. (A Learned Discourse on Justification, p. 6)”
― Richard Hooker