Steve Kang > Steve's Quotes

“People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.”
― Søren Kierkegaard

“It is so hard to believe because it is so hard to obey.”
― Soren Kierkegaard

“There is nothing with which every man is so afraid as getting to know how enormously much he is capable of doing and becoming.”
― Soren Kierkegaard

“It is the duty of the human understanding to understand that there are things which it cannot understand...”
― Søren Kierkegaard

“A 'no' does not hide anything, but a 'yes' very easily becomes a deception.”
― Soren Kierkegaard

“...why bother remembering a past that cannot be made into a present?”
― Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling

“The task must be made difficult, for only the difficult inspires the noble-hearted.”
― Søren Kierkegaard

“To be lost in spiritlessness is the most terrible thing of all.”
― Søren Kierkegaard

“Faith is the highest passion in a human being. Many in every
generation may not come that far, but none comes further.”
― Søren Kierkegaard

“Far from idleness being the root of all evil, it is rather the only true good.”
― Soren Kierkegaard

“Don't forget to love yourself.”
― Soren Kierkegaard

“to have faith is precisely to lose one's mind so as to win God.”
― Søren Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death: A Christian Psychological Exposition for Upbuilding and Awakening

“With respect to love we speak continually about perfection and the perfect person. With respect to love Christianity also speaks continually about perfection and the perfect person. Alas, but we men talk about finding the perfect person in order to love him. Christianity speaks about being the perfect person who limitlessly loves the person he sees.”
― Søren Kierkegaard, Works of Love

“Thus our own age is essentially one of understanding, and on the average, perhaps, more knowledgeable than any former generation, but it is without passion. Every one knows a great deal, we all know which way we ought to go and all the different ways we can go, but nobody is willing to move.”
― Søren Kierkegaard, The Present Age

“Have you realized that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself? Take those thoughts that come to you the moment you wake up in the morning. You have not originated them but they are talking to you, they bring back the problems of yesterday, etc. Somebody is talking. Who is talking to you? Your self is talking to you. Now this man’s treatment [in Psalm 42] was this: instead of allowing this self to talk to him, he starts talking to himself. “Why art thou cast down, O my soul?” he asks. His soul had been depressing him, crushing him. So he stands up and says, “Self, listen for moment, I will speak to you.”
― Martyn Lloyd-Jones

“If we believe that Jesus of Nazareth is the only begotten Son of God and that He came into this world and went to the cross of Calvary and died for our sins and rose again in order to justify us and to give us life anew and prepare us for heaven-if you really believe that, there is only one inevitable deduction, namely that He is entitled to the whole of our lives, without any limit whatsoever.”
― David Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Studies in the Sermon on the Mount

“we must never look at any sin in our past life in any way except that which leads us to praise God and to magnify His grace in Christ Jesus.”
― D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cures

“When a man truly sees himself, he knows nobody can say anything about him that is too bad.”
― D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Studies in the Sermon on the Mount

“I will not glory, even in my orthodoxy, for even that can be a snare if I make a god of it... Let us rejoice in Him in all His fulness and in Him alone.”
― D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

“Why are there wars in the world? Why is there this constant international tension? What is the matter with the world? Why war and all the unhappiness and turmoil and discord amongst men? According to this Beatitude, there is only one answer to these questions-sin. Nothing else; just sin.”
― David Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Studies in the Sermon on the Mount

“The Christian is not superficial in any sense, but is fundamentally serious and fundamentally happy. You see, the joy of the Christian is a holy joy, the happiness of the Christian is a serious happiness. ... it is a solemn joy, it is a holy joy, it is a serious happiness; so that, though he is grave and sober-minded and serious, he is never cold and prohibitive.”
― David Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Studies in the Sermon on the Mount

“How easy it is to read the Scriptures and give a kind of nominal assent to the truth and yet never to appropriate what it tells us!”
― D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cures

“Prayer is beyond any question the highest activity of the human soul. Man is at his greatest and highest when upon his knees he comes face to face with God.”
― Martyn Lloyd-Jones

“To make it quite practical I have a very simple test. After I have explained the way of Christ to somebody I say “Now, are you ready to say that you are a Christian?” And they hesitate. And then I say, “What’s the matter? Why are you hesitating?” And so often people say, “I don’t feel like I’m good enough yet. I don’t think I’m ready to say I’m a Christian now.” And at once I know that I have been wasting my breath. They are still thinking in terms of themselves. They have to do it. It sounds very modest to say, “Well, I don’t think I’ good enough,” but it’s a very denial of the faith. The very essence of the Christian faith is to say that He is good enough and I am in Him. As long as you go on thinking about yourself like that and saying, “I’m not good enough; Oh, I’m not good enough,” you are denying God – you are denying the gospel – you are denying the very essence of the faith and you will never be happy. You think you’re better at times and then again you will find you are not as good at other times than you thought you were. You will be up and down forever. How can I put it plainly? It doesn’t matter if you have almost entered into the depths of hell. It does not matter if you are guilty of murder as well as every other vile sin. It does not matter from the standpoint of being justified before God at all. You are no more hopeless than the most moral and respectable person in the world.”
― Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cure

“It is very foolish to ignore the past. The man who does ignore it, and assumes that our problems are quite new, and that therefore the past has nothing at all to teach us, is a man who is not only grossly ignorant of the Scriptures, he is equally ignorant of some of the greatest lessons even in secular history.”
― Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Revival

“Be still, and know that I am God'. We must not interpret that 'Be still' in a sentimental manner. Some regard it as a kind of exhortation to us to be silent; but it is nothing of the sort. It means, 'Give up (or 'Give in') and admit I am God. God is addressing people who are opposed to Him”
― David Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Studies in the Sermon on the Mount

“The man who is meek is not even sensitive about himself. He is not always watching himself and his own interests. He is not always on the defensive… To be truly meek means we no longer protect ourselves, because we see there is nothing worth defending… The man who is truly meek never pities himself, he is never sorry for himself. He never talks to himself and says, “You are having a hard time, how unkind these people are not to understand you.”
― Martyn Lloyd-Jones

“We tend to have a wrong view of law and to think of it as something that is opposed to grace. But it is not. Law is only opposed to grace in the sense that there was once a covenant of law, and we are now under the covenant of grace.”
― David Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Studies in the Sermon on the Mount

“The terrible, tragic fallacy of the last hundred years has been to think that all man's troubles are due to his environment, and that to change the man you have nothing to do but change his environment. That is a tragic fallacy. It overlooks the fact that it was in Paradise that man fell.”
― David Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Studies in the Sermon on the Mount

“The heretics were never dishonest men; they were mistaken men. They should not be thought of as men who were deliberately setting out to go wrong and to teach something that is wrong; they have been some of the most sincere men that the Church has ever known. What was the matter with them? Their trouble was this: they evolved a theory and they were rather pleased with it; then they went back with this theory to the Bible, and they seemed to find it everywhere.”
― David Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Studies in the Sermon on the Mount