Christopher Kanas > Christopher's Quotes

“Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.”
― Albert Camus

“I want neither a terrorist spirituality that keeps me in a perpetual state of fright about being in right relationship with my heavenly Father nor a sappy spirituality that portrays God as such a benign teddy bear that there is no aberrant behavior or desire of mine that he will not condone. I want a relationship with the Abba of Jesus, who is infinitely compassionate with my brokenness and at the same time an awesome, incomprehensible, and unwieldy Mystery. ”
― Brennan Manning

“The scene was not without a mixture of awe, such as must always invest the spectacle of guilt and shame in a fellow creature, before society shall have grown corrupt enough to smile, instead of shuddering at it.”
― Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter

“Pilate was required to release one of the prisoners, so he gave the mob the choice of Jesus or Barabbas, a notorious murderer and insurrectionist-in otherwords, someone who incites mobs.
Again, the mob "spoke with one voice" demanding "with loud shouts" that Jesus be crucified.”
― Ann Coulter, Demonic: How the Liberal Mob is Endangering America

“Drink then," he replied, still with the same cold composure.
"Does thou know mw so little Hester Pyrnne? Are my purposes wont to be so shallow? Even if I imagine a scheme of vengeance, what could i do better for my object than to let thee live-than to give the medicines against all harm and peril of life-so that this burning shame may still blaze upon thy bosom?”
― Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter

“The theories of the French revolutionaries, as summarized by historian Roger Hancock, were founded on "respect for no humanity except that which they proposed to create.
In order to liberate mankind from tradition, the revolutionaries were ready to make him altogether the creature of a new society, to reconstruct his very humanity to meet the demands of the general will.”
― Ann Coulter, Demonic: How the Liberal Mob is Endangering America

“Anyone can be a barbarian; it requires a terrible effort to remain a civilized man.”
― Leonard Woolf

“We are all vainer of our luck than of our merits.”
― Rex Stout, The Rubber Band

“The cross is not a detour or a hurdle on the way to the kingdom, nor is it even the way to the kingdom; it is the kingdom come.”
― John Howard Yoder, The Politics of Jesus

“Eventually my mother suffered a complete breakdown, and the court orders were finally signed. They took her to the State Mental Hospital at Kalamazoo. My mother remained in the same hospital at Kalamazoo for about 26 years.

My last visit, when I knew I would never come to see her again-there-was in 1952. I was twenty-seven. My brother Philbert had told me that on his last visit, she had recognized him somewhat. "In spots" he said.

But she didn't recognize me at all.
She stared at me. She didn't know who I was.
Her mind, when I tried to talk, to reach her, was somewhere else. I asked, "Mama, do you know what day it is?"
She said, staring, "All the people have gone."

I can't describe how I felt. The woman who had brought me into the world, and nursed me, and advised me, and chastised me, and loved me, didn't know me.

It was as if I was trying to walk up the side of a hill of feathers."

-Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X”
― Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X

“Reading was my escape and my comfort, my consolation, my stimulant of choice: reading for the pure pleasure of it, for the beautiful stillness that surrounds you when you hear an author's words reverberating in your head.”
― Paul Auster, The Brooklyn Follies

“No man can be an exile if he remembers that all the world is one city.”
― C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces

“When a human life is open to all that humanity can be, humanity and divinity flow together as one. It was and is a radical insight, and one the consciousness of the mystic is destined to understand.”
― John Shelby Spong, The Fourth Gospel: Tales of a Jewish Mystic

“Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.”
― James Baldwin

“No sooner do I conquer a bad habit than I become the biggest critic of anyone who still does what I just stopped doing.”
― Judah Smith, Jesus Is: Find a New Way to Be Human

“Rules are not proof of our spirituality. If anything, they are proof of our sinfulness, a reminder that we have a tendency toward wrongdoing and that we need help.”
― Judah Smith, Jesus Is: Find a New Way to Be Human

“Nothing great in the world was accomplished without passion.”
― Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

“The best way to take care of the future is to take care of the present moment.”
― Thích Nhất Hạnh, Living Buddha, Living Christ

“But here the correlation with Beauty and the Beast ends. In the fable, the beauty kisses the beast. In the Bible, the beauty does much more. He becomes the beast so the beast can become the beauty. Jesus changes places with us. We, like Adam, were under a curse, but Jesus "changed places with us and put himself under that curse" (Gal. 3:13).”
― Max Lucado, He Chose the Nails: What God Did to Win Your Heart

“The same hand that stilled the seas stills your guilt.
The same hand that cleansed the Temple cleanses your heart.
The hand is the hand of God.
The nail is the nail of God.
And as the hands of Jesus opened for the nail, the doors of heaven opened for you.”
― Max Lucado, He Chose the Nails: What God Did to Win Your Heart

“If pride is what goes before a fall, the shame is what keeps you from getting up after one.”
― max lucado , He Chose the Nails: What God Did to Win Your Heart

“In 1983, after my son, Salvador, was born, I visited Cihuatlan, my dad's hometown in Mexico with my dad. I met a lady there who told me, "Carlos, I grew up with Don Jose'. (dad) We were from the same generation. I want you to know that you might be recognized around the world, but here Don Jose' is the Santana that counts." My dad just looked at me. I smiled and said, "Hey that's fine with me.”
― Carlos Santana

“It is one thing to accept something intellectually, but to accept the same thing emotionally is an entirely different matter.
The one thing psychiatry cannot fill is man's inherent need for emotionalizing through dogma. Man needs ceremony and ritual, fantasy and enchantment. Psychiatry, despite all the good it has done, has robbed man of wonder and fantasy which religion, in the past, has provided.”
― Anton LaVey

“The reason a person viciously strikes out against you is because they are afraid of you or what you represent, or are resentful of your happiness.”
― Anton LaVey

“In life, unlike chess, the game continues after checkmate.”
― Isaac Asimov

“It takes strength, man, to know when to let go of your kids, really, really let them go and trust them with the one who made them in the first place.”
― Carlos Santana

“As he continued to talk to me, I realized one of the fundamental points about Islamism that so many people fail to understand. The way Osman was speaking wasn’t in the orthodox, religious way of the imam with a stick; he was talking about politics, about events that were happening now. That’s crucial to understanding what Islamism is all about: it isn’t a religious movement with political consequences, it is a political movement with religious consequences.”
― Maajid Nawaz, Radical: My Journey out of Islamist Extremism

“What has changed in modern times, however, is that the media, the so-called fourth estate made up of America's best and brightest journalists, are no longer trusted.

Sadly that leaves the American people with no one to rely on: not the politicians; not the media.

Nature may abhor a vacuum, but political systems abhor a vacuum of trust even more. If we don't find someone to fill it, someone who can unify the country behind the truth, then that vacuum will be filled for us.”
― Glenn Beck

“The appearance of things changes according to the emotions; and thus we see magic and beauty in them, while the magic and beauty are really in ourselves.”
― Kahlil Gibran, The Broken Wings

“So long as a man knows the meaning of fear, he will need the ways and means to defend himself against that fear.”
― Anton LaVey