Daniel Santovin > Daniel's Quotes

“No love is ever wasted. Its worth does not lie in reciprocity. ”
― Neal A. Maxwell

“Empathy during agony is a portion of divinity.”
― Neal A. Maxwell

“Perfect love is perfectly patient.”
― Neal A. Maxwell, All These Things Shall Give Thee Experience

“Coming unto the Lord is not a negotiation, but a surrender.”
― Neal A. Maxwell

“If, in the end, you have not chosen Jesus Christ it will not matter what you have chosen.”
― Neal A. Maxwell

“Never give up what you want most for what you want today.”
― Neal A. Maxwell

“Language is very powerful. Language does not just describe reality. Language creates the reality it describes.”
― Desmond Tutu

“Religion is like a knife: you can either use it to cut bread, or stick in someone's back.”
― Desmond Tutu

“We are made for loving. If we don’t love, we will be like plants without water.”
― Desmond Tutu

“It is through weakness and vulnerability that most of us learn empathy and compassion and discover our soul.”
― Desmond Tutu, God Has a Dream: A Vision of Hope for Our Time

“There is nothing more difficult than waking someone who is only pretending to be asleep.”
― Desmond Tutu

“A person is a person through other persons; you can't be human in isolation; you are human only in relationships.”
― Archbishop Desmond Tutu

“We must be ready to learn from one another, not claiming that we alone possess all truth and that somehow we have a corner on God.”
― Desmond Tutu

“We are made for goodness. We are made for love. We are made for friendliness. We are made for togetherness. We are made for all of the beautiful things that you and I know. We are made to tell the world that there are no outsiders. All are welcome: black, white, red, yellow, rich, poor, educated, not educated, male, female, gay, straight, all, all, all. We all belong to this family, this human family, God's family.”
― Archbishop Desmond Tutu

“You don't choose your family. They are God's gift to you, as you are to them.”
― Desmond Tutu

“The Christian does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us.”
― C.S. Lewis

“Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person's ultimate good as far as it can be obtained.”
― C.S. Lewis

“Sabbath is the time set aside to do nothing so that we can receive everything, to set aside our anxious attempts to make ourselves useful, to set aside our tense restlessness, to set aside our media-satiated boredom. Sabbath is the time to receive silence and let it deepen into gratitude, to receive quiet into which forgotten faces and voices unobtrusively make themselves present, to receive the days of the just completed week and absorb the wonder and miracle still reverberating from each one, to receive our Lord's amazing grace.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, Tell It Slant: A Conversation on the Language of Jesus in His Stories and Prayers

“American religion is conspicuous for its messianically pretentious energy, its embarassingly banal prose, and its impatiently hustling ambition.”
― Eugene Peterson

“Go figure out what this Scripture means: ‘I’m after mercy, not religion.’ I’m here to invite outsiders, not coddle insiders.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language--Numbered Edition

“We live in what one writer has called the "age of sensation."' We think that if we don't feel something there can be no authenticity in doing it. But the wisdom of God says something different: that we can act ourselves into a new way of feeling much quicker than we can feel ourselves into a new way of acting. Worship is an act that develops feelings for God, not a feeling for God that is expressed in an act of worship. When we obey the command to praise God in worship, our deep, essential need to be in relationship with God is nurtured.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society

“We underestimate God and we overestimate evil. We don’t see what God is doing and conclude that he is doing nothing. We see everything that evil is doing and think it is in control of everyone.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, Run with the Horses: The Quest for Life at Its Best

“Joy is not a requirement of Christian discipleship, it is a consequence. It is not what we have to acquire in order to experience life in Christ; it is what comes to us when we are walking in the way of faith and obedience.”
― Eugene Peterson, Perseverance: A Long Obedience in the Same Direction

“Prayer is subversive activity. It involves a more or less open act of defiance against any claim by the current regime.... [As we pray,] slowly but surely, not culture, not family, not government, not job, not even the tyrannous self can stand against the quiet power and creative influence of God's sovereignty.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, The Contemplative Pastor: Returning to the Art of Spiritual Direction

“So if you’re serious about living this new resurrection life with Christ, act like it. Pursue the things over which Christ presides. Don’t shuffle along, eyes to the ground, absorbed with the things right in front of you. Look up, and be alert to what is going on around Christ—that’s where the action is. See things from his perspective.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language--Numbered Edition

“Exile (being where we don't want to be with people we don't want to be with) forces a decision: Will I focus my attention on what is wrong with the world and feel sorry for myself? Or will I focus my energies on how I can live at my best in this place I find myself?..."I will do my best with what is here.”
― Eugene Peterson, "Run with the Horses"

“The huge irony is that the more the gospel is offered in consumer terms, the more the consumers are disappointed.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, Run with the Horses: The Quest for Life at Its Best

“The church is the primary arena in which we learn that glory does not consist in what we do for God but in what God does for us.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, Tell It Slant: A Conversation on the Language of Jesus in His Stories and Prayers

“My feelings are important for many things. They are essential and valuable. They keep me aware of much that is true and real. But they tell me next to nothing about God or my relation to God. My security comes from who God is, not from how I feel. Discipleship is a decision to live by what I know about God, not by what I feel about Him or my neighbors.”
― Eugene H. Peterson

“And so we gain hope—not from the darkness of our suffering, not from pat answers in books, but from the God who sees our suffering and shares our pain.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, The Message Remix 2.0: The Bible In contemporary Language