Darrell McCauley > Darrell's Quotes

“It is a good rule after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between.”
― C.S. Lewis

“A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason.”
― Thomas Paine, Common Sense

“There is no charm equal to tenderness of heart.”
― Jane Austen

“If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?”
― Albert Einstein

“Query: How does the never to be differ from what never was?”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Road

“Years later he'd stood in the charred ruins of a library where blackened books lay in pools of water. Shelves tipped over. Some rage at the lies arranged in their thousands row on row. He picked up one of the books and thumbed through the heavy bloated pages. He'd not have thought the value of the smallest thing predicated on a world to come. It surprised him. That the space which these things occupied was itself an expectation.”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Road

“He resembled a pilot, which to a seaman is trustworthiness personified.”
― Joseph Conrad

“You are fond of history! And so are Mr. Allen and my father; and I have two brothers who do not dislike it. So many instances within my small circle of friends is remarkable! At this rate, I shall not pity the writers of history any longer. If people like to read their books, it is all very well, but to be at so much trouble in filling great volumes, which, as I used to think, nobody would willingly ever look into, to be labouring only for the torment of little boys and girls, always struck me as a hard fate; and though I know it is all very right and necessary, I have often wondered at the person's courage that could sit down on purpose to do it.”
― Jane Austen

“and even you yourself, who do not altogether seem particularly friendly to very severe, very intense application, may perhaps be brought to acknowledge that it is very well worth-while to be tormented for two or three years of one's life, for the sake of being able to read all the rest of it.”
― Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

“You must really begin to harden yourself to the idea of being worth looking at.”
― Jane Austen, Mansfield Park

“The season, the scene, the air, were all favourable to tenderness and sentiment.”
― Jane Austen, Mansfield Park

“If I could sum up what the Bible teaches about giving in one statement, it would be this: Generous living produces emotional happiness.”
― Chip Ingram, Genius of Generosity: Lessons From a Secret Pact Between Two Friends

“Earlier in this century someone claimed that we work at our play and play at our work. Today the confusion has deepened: we worship our work, work at our play, and play in our worship.”
― Leland Ryken, Redeeming the Time: A Christian Approach to Work and Leisure

“Do not let Sunday be taken from you. If your soul has no sunday, it becomes an orphan.”
― Albert Schweitzer

“The only man who behaved sensibly was my tailor: he took my measure anew every time he saw me, whilst all the rest went on with their old measurements and expected them to fit me.”
― George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman

“Far overhead from beyond the veil of blue sky which hid them the stars sang again; a pure, cold, difficult music. Then there came a swift flash like fire (but it burnt nobody) either from the sky or from the Lion itself, and every drop of blood tingled in the children's bodies, and the deepest, wildest voice they had ever heard was saying: "Narnia, Narnia, Narnia, awake. Love. Think. Speak. Be walking trees. Be talking beasts. Be divine waters.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Magician’s Nephew

“All great literature is one of two stories; a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town.”
― Leo Tolstoy

“And so, just as in prison men held together by common misfortune feel more at ease when they are together, so one does not notice the trap in life when people with a bent for analysis and generalization meet together and pass their time in the interchange of proud and free ideas.”
― Anton Chekhov, Ward No. 6 and Other Stories

“But the greatest cause of verbicide is the fact that most people are obviously far more anxious to express their approval and disapproval of things than to describe them. Hence the tendency of words to become less descriptive and more evaluative; then become evaluative, while still retaining some hint of the sort of goodness or badness implied; and to end up by being purely evaluative -- useless synonyms for good or for bad.”
― C.S. Lewis, Studies in Words

“When one has read a book, I think there is nothing so nice as discussing it with some one else - even though it sometimes produces rather fierce arguments.”
― C.S. Lewis, They stand together: The letters of C S Lewis to Arthur Greeves 1914-1963

“For every one pupil who needs to be guarded against a weak excess of sensibility there are three who need to be awakened from the slumber of cold vulgarity. The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles but to irrigate deserts. The right defence against false sentiments is to inculcate just sentiments. By starving the sensibility of our pupils we only make them easier prey to the propagandist when he comes. For famished nature will be avenged and a hard heart is no infallible protection against a soft head.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man

“No justification of virtue will enable a man to be virtuous. Without the aid of trained emotions the intellect is powerless against the animal organism. I had sooner play cards against a man who was quite skeptical about ethics, but bred to believe that ‘a gentleman does not cheat’, than against an irreproachable moral philosopher who had been brought up among sharpers.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man

“In sum, making an idol out of the self is just plain mean. We were never designed to bear the God-sized weight of creating and sustaining our own identities. It puts an unbearable weight on people’s shoulders, especially children, when they are indoctrinated to follow their hearts, be true to themselves, and dream up their own identities. It deprives them of the unspeakable joy and meaning that go with being authored by Someone far more brilliant, strong, and loving than we are. Our churches must serve as trauma recovery centers for those crushed by the mainstream credo of self-creation.”
― Thaddeus Williams, Confronting Injustice without Compromising Truth: 12 Questions Christians Should Ask About Social Justice

“There came a time when you realized that moving on was pointless. That you took yourself with you wherever you went.”
― Stephen King, Doctor Sleep

“Hell begins with a grumbling mood, always complaining, always blaming others... but you are still distinct from it. You may even criticize it in yourself and wish you could stop it. But there may come a day when you can no longer. Then there will be no you left to criticize the mood or even to enjoy it, but just the grumble itself, going on forever like a machine. It is not a question of God "sending us" to hell. In each of us there is something growing, which will BE hell unless it is nipped in the bud. ”
― C.S. Lewis

“The burden which is well borne becomes light.”
― Ovid

“As you come into this world, something else is also born. You begin your life, and it begins a journey towards you. It moves slowly, but it never stops. Wherever you go, whatever path you take, it will follow - never faster, never slower, always coming. You will run; it will walk. You will rest; it will not. One day, you will linger in the same place too long; you will sit too still or sleep too deep. And when, too late, you rise to go, you will notice a second shadow next to yours. Your life will then be over.”
― Steven Moffat

“I suppose there are two views about everything,” said Mark. “Eh? Two views? There are a dozen views about everything until you know the answer. Then there’s never more than one.”
― C.S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength

“Youth and age touch only the surface of our lives.”
― C.S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength

“This most beautiful system of the sun, planets and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being...
This Being governs all things, not as the soul of the world, but as Lord over all; and on account of his dominion he is wont, to be called Lord God παντοκρατωρ or Universal Ruler.”
― Isaac Newton, The Principia : Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy