Sinazo Ntsonge > Sinazo's Quotes

“See the things that you want as already yours.”
― Rhonda Byrne, The Secret

“The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.”
― David Foster Wallace

“Your arrogance doesn't cheapen me.”
― Toba Beta, Master of Stupidity

“Arrogance makes you stronger from outside, but even more weaker from inside.”
― Ujas Soni

“From long experience she knew that she wore her loneliness like armor. Very few people ever recognized it for what it was. To the casual observer it looked very much like arrogance. Sometimes it was.”
― Nevada Barr, Track of the Cat

“Only God is in a position to look down upon someone.”
― Habeeb Akande

“Arrogance is thinking you are above someone else,
Confidence is knowing no one is above you.”
― Habeeb Akande

“Stupid people will mistake your confidence for arrogance.”
― Habeeb Akande

“Never mistake arrogance for intellect.”
― D.B. Harrop

“Arrogance is trying to convince others you're more than who they know you are.”
― Bianca Frazier

“Those who claim the right to that arrogance without accomplishments to back it up deserve to be exposed.”
― Jeff Ashton, Imperfect Justice: Prosecuting Casey Anthony

“If you love something, set it free.
If it comes back to you,
It is yours.
If it doesn't,
It never was.”
― Anonymous

“First of all, love is a joint experience between two persons — but the fact that it is a joint experience does not mean that it is a similar experience to the two people involved. There are the lover and the beloved, but these two come from different countries. Often the beloved is only a stimulus for all the stored-up love which had lain quiet within the lover for a long time hitherto. And somehow every lover knows this. He feels in his soul that his love is a solitary thing. He comes to know a new, strange loneliness and it is this knowledge which makes him suffer. So there is only one thing for the lover to do. He must house his love within himself as best he can; he must create for himself a whole new inward world — a world intense and strange, complete in himself. Let it be added here that this lover about whom we speak need not necessarily be a young man saving for a wedding ring — this lover can be man, woman, child, or indeed any human creature on this earth.

Now, the beloved can also be of any description. The most outlandish people can be the stimulus for love. A man may be a doddering great-grandfather and still love only a strange girl he saw in the streets of Cheehaw one afternoon two decades past. The preacher may love a fallen woman. The beloved may be treacherous, greasy-headed, and given to evil habits. Yes, and the lover may see this as clearly as anyone else — but that does not affect the evolution of his love one whit. A most mediocre person can be the object of a love which is wild, extravagant, and beautiful as the poison lilies of the swamp. A good man may be the stimulus for a love both violent and debased, or a jabbering madman may bring about in the soul of someone a tender and simple idyll. Therefore, the value and quality of any love is determined solely by the lover himself.

It is for this reason that most of us would rather love than be loved. Almost everyone wants to be the lover. And the curt truth is that, in a deep secret way, the state of being beloved is intolerable to many. The beloved fears and hates the lover, and with the best of reasons. For the lover is forever trying to strip bare his beloved. The lover craves any possible relation with the beloved, even if this experience can cause him only pain.”
― carson mccullers, The Ballad of the Sad Café and Other Stories

“I am in that temper that if I were under water I would scarcely kick to come to the top.”
― John Keats

“To love a man enough to help him, you have to forfeit the warm, self-righteous glow that comes from judging.”
― Ron Hall, Denver Moore

“There is freedom waiting for you,
On the breezes of the sky,
And you ask "What if I fall?"
Oh but my darling,
What if you fly?”
― Erin Hanson

“You will face your greatest opposition when you are closest to your biggest miracle.”
― Shannon L. Alder

“Something very beautiful happens to people when their world has fallen apart: a humility, a nobility, a higher intelligence emerges at just the point when our knees hit the floor. Perhaps, in a way, that's where humanity is now: about to discover we're not as smart as we thought we were, will be forced by life to surrender our attacks and defenses which avail us of nothing, and finally break through into the collective beauty of who we really are."

[Facebook post, August 31, 2013]”
― Marianne Williamson

“Only strong women, and they seem to be rare, can handle a frank and direct woman who doesn't sweet-talk or need others to nerve her. You can identify the easily intimidated because they need a gaggle of like-minded clones to back them up when they feign offense, which is merely a guise for their insecurity.”
― Donna Lynn Hope

“Everywhere......everyone you meet....is a potential brother or sister in CHRIST.”
― Paul Washer

“Avoid trivial pursuits. You are a child of God, destined for glory, and called to do great things in His Name. Do not waste your life on hobbies, sports, and other recreational pursuits. Do not throw away the precious moments of your life on entertainment, movies, and video games. Though some of these things can properly have a 'small place' in the Christian’s life, we must be careful not to give undue attention to temporal and fruitless activities. Do not waste your life. Employ the time of your youth in developing the character and skills necessary to be a useful servant of God.”
― Paul David Washer

“As a rich man sees no reason for rejoicing in a meager gift of bread until a turn of events leaves him impoverished, so the sinner finds no joy in salvation until the horrid nature of his sin is revealed and he sees himself as wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked.”
― Paul Washer, The Gospel's Power & Message

“The Gospel does not call us to receive Christ as an addition to our life, but as our life.”
― Paul Washer

“There are few things more blasphemous than a preacher who compliments the unbeliever on the wonderful life he has made for himself, extolling all that he has achieved, and then adding that he lacks one thing: he needs Jesus to make it all complete. This was not the attitude of the apostle Paul, who counted even the most splendid things in his previous life to be dung in comparison to Christ.11 We should never present Christ to the unbeliever as the cherry on top of an already wonderful life. The unbeliever must see that he has no life, and that all his personal achievements prior to Christ are monuments to his own vanity: made of sand and quickly passing.”
― Paul Washer, The Gospel's Power & Message

“Listen to yourself speak, saying, “The knowledge of God has no practical application.” Do you know why all your Christian bookstores are filled up with self-help books, and five ways to do this or that, and six ways to be godly, and 10 ways not to fall?—because people don’t know God! And so they have to be given all sorts of trivial little devices of the flesh to keep them walking as sheep ought to walk! “Awake to righteousness, and sin not; for some have not the knowledge of God: I speak this to your shame” (1Co 15:34). Why the rampant sinning even among God’s people? It is a lack of the knowledge of God!”
― Paul Washer, Ten Indictments against the Modern Church

“The most common argument used against church discipline is that it is unloving and judgmental. In rebuttal, we merely need to point to the teachings of our Lord, who commanded such a practice. If we are unloving in obeying the command, was He unloving in giving it? Although we are not to judge with critical and censorious attitudes, we are commanded to judge and even expel if necessary.28 If in the consummation of all things we are going to judge angels, are we not now able to judge matters pertaining to the church and her well-being?29 Our boasting in a love that refuses to confront unrepentant sin is not good. Do we not understand that a little leaven leavens the whole lump of dough?30 Are we demonstrating love toward God when we allow sin to run rampant in the church so that God’s name is blasphemed among unbelievers?31 Are we demonstrating love toward our brothers in Christ when we allow them to be destroyed by habitual sin, or are we demonstrating self-love and refusing to enter into conflict for the sake of self-preservation?”
― Paul Washer, The Gospel Call and True Conversion

“When we realize what we were before Christ and what we deserved in that state, it further magnifies the enormity of the gospel for us.”
― Paul Washer, The Gospel's Power & Message

“The goal of the Christian life is the pursuit of an intimate knowledge of God that leads to a greater estimation of His worth, a greater satisfaction and joy in His person, and a greater giving of oneself for His glory. As”
― Paul Washer, The Gospel Call and True Conversion

“The problem was
you kept waiting for another
to call you powerful.

You naively believed men like him
were capable of loving
women who make
crowns for thorns.

The problem was
You loved him so shamelessly,
even his lies became holy.”
― Ijeoma Umebinyuo, Questions for Ada