Joel > Joel 's Quotes

“But reading the Bible, you learn that it’s not about trying to be something you’re not—it’s about learning to see the movement and motion and possibilities right in the midst of whatever world you find yourself in. We’re not living in the first century or the ancient Near East—we’re here, now. At this time. In this world.”
― Rob Bell, What Is the Bible?: How an Ancient Library of Poems, Letters, and Stories Can Transform the Way You Think and Feel About Everything

“The Bible is not an argument. It is a record of human experience. The point is not to prove that it’s the word of God or it’s inspired or it’s whatever the current word is that people are using. The point is to enter into its stories with such intention and vitality that you find what it is that inspired people to write these books.”
― Rob Bell, What Is the Bible?: How an Ancient Library of Poems, Letters, and Stories Can Transform the Way You Think and Feel About Everything

“You’ve even created religions that tell you that you are born in sin—that you are sinners at birth—in order to convince yourselves of your own evil.”
― Neale Donald Walsch, The Complete Conversations with God

“Although the rhythm of the waves beats a kind of time, it is not clock or calendar time. It has no urgency. It happens to be timeless time.”
― Alan W. Watts, Cloud-hidden, Whereabouts Unknown

“This is the paradox of the ocean.”
― Alan W. Watts, Cloud-hidden, Whereabouts Unknown

“Now, if the gulls and the fish do not philosophize, they have no consciousness of life being good as a whole or bad as a whole. So when we philosophize and pity the poor fish, that really turns out to be just our own problem.”
― Alan W. Watts, Cloud-hidden, Whereabouts Unknown

“There are situations when one owes solitude to other people, if only not to bother them. But, more than this, the multitude needs solitaries as it needs postmen, doctors, and fishermen”
― Alan W. Watts, Cloud-hidden, Whereabouts Unknown

“This unstitched loneliness keeps bleeding out of my hands. I was always ready to be someone else. To be remembered like a fabricated war history. Reunion with myself remains a personal tragedy. But to be a poet without being tragic would have been quite a shame.”
― Noor Unnahar, New Names for Lost Things

“WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“It was curious that he seemed not merely to have lost the power of expressing himself, but even to have forgotten what it was that he had originally intended to say.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“And on the subject of burning books: I want to congratulate librarians, not famous for their physical strength or their powerful political connections or their great wealth, who, all over this country, have staunchly resisted anti-democratic bullies who have tried to remove certain books from their shelves, and have refused to reveal to thought police the names of persons who have checked out those titles.

So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House or the Supreme Court or the Senate or the House of Representatives or the media. The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country

“And even if wars didn’t keep coming like glaciers, there would still be plain old death.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“My father was very sure about certain matters pertaining to the universe. To him all good things-trout as well as eternal salvation-come by grace and grace comes by art and art does not come easy.”
― Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It and Other Stories

“Do you not think that there are things which you cannot understand, and yet which are; that some people see things that others cannot? But there are things old and new which must not be contemplate by men´s eyes, because they know -or think they know- some things which other men have told them. Ah, it is the fault of our science that it wants to explain all; and if it explain not, then it says there is nothing to explain.”
― Bram Stoker, Dracula

“Ah, it is the fault of our science that it wants to explain all; and if it explain not, then it says there is nothing to explain.”
― Bram Stoker, Dracula

“Here is the key: End the delusion of time. Time and mind are inseparable. Remove time from the mind and it stops — unless you choose to use it.”
― Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment

“God is not a Christian, God is not a Jew, or a Muslim, or a Hindu, or a Buddhist. All of those are human systems which human beings have created to try to help us walk into the mystery of God. I honor my tradition, I walk through my tradition, but I don't think my tradition defines God, I think it only points me to God.”
― John Shelby Spong

“Abby wanted to say “Up yours” or “I didn’t want to sit with you anyways,” but to her profound disappointment she found herself looking down at the grass, embarrassed, desperate to be allowed to sit at the picnic table.”
― Grady Hendrix, My Best Friend's Exorcism

“People empty me. I have to get away to refill.”
― Charles Bukowski