David Dunlap > David's Quotes

“God creates out of nothing. Wonderful you say. Yes, to be sure, but he does what is still more wonderful: he makes saints out of sinners.”
― Soren Kierkegaard, The Journals of Kierkegaard

“Grace finds us beggars but leaves us debtors.”
― Augustus Toplady

“God is too good to be unkind and He is too wise to be mistaken. And when we cannot trace His hand, we must trust His heart.”
― Charles Spurgeon

“A good relationship has a pattern like a dance and is built on some of the same rules. The partners do not need to hold on tightly, because they move confidently in the same pattern, intricate but gay and swift and free, like a country dance of Mozart's. To touch heavily would be to arrest the pattern and freeze the movement, to check the endlessly changing beauty of its unfolding. There is no place here for the possessive clutch, the clinging arm, the heavy hand, only the barest touch in passing. Now arm in arm, now face to face, now back to back -- it does not matter which because they know they are partners moving to the same rhythm, creating a pattern together, and being invisibly nourished by it.

The joy of such a pattern is...the joy of living in the moment. Lightness of touch and living in the moment are intertwined. One cannot dance well unless one is completely in time with the music, not leaning back to the last step or pressing forward to the next one, but poised directly on the present step as it comes... But how does one learn this technique of the dance? Why is it so difficult? What makes us hesitate and stumble? It is fear, I think, that makes one cling nostalgically to the last moment or clutch greedily toward the next. [And fear] can only be exorcised by its opposite: love.”
― Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea

“Now he discovered that secret from which one never quite recovers, that even in the most perfect love one person loves less profoundly than the other. There may be two equally good, equally gifted, equally beautiful, but there may never be two that love one another equally well.”
― Thornton Wilder, The Bridge of San Luis Rey

“Hold your parents tenderly, for the world will seem a strange and lonely place when they're gone.”
― William Luce, spoken by the character of Emily Dickinson

“You are in love,” he said, “for that is exactly how love feels. It is the lifting of a mask, the revealing of one’s true self to another, and the forced acceptance, the awful awareness, that the other person may never feel the same way.”
― Kate Morton, The Clockmaker's Daughter

“Joshua said nothing, for his mind was even now limning the vacancy. Lincoln would no more be seated on the far side of the dining table. He would no more ride his horse into town or let his huge hands rove through the library of stroll past the hemp house or listen to Eliza gabble or applaud Mary's nocturnes or argue some abstruse point of law with James or scratch behind Growler's ears as the dog lay stretched around his feet. From henceforth, there would be only space where Lincoln used to be.
And in Joshua's mind, that space began to expand and deepen until it became a vast nullity, blanketing everything around him until it seemed the night itself had been swallowed up by it.”
― Louis Bayard, Courting Mr. Lincoln

“I am sure, my poor, lame, mangled conformity to my Maker's commands, fills me with shame, and would make me hang down my head as a bulrush. But my Lord's death, my Lord's obedience, my divine Lord's merit, encourages me, imboldens [sic] me, and enables me to say, Who shall condemn me?”
― James Hervey

“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”
― Søren Kierkegaard

“But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”
― George Eliot, Middlemarch

“There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn't true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.”
― Soren Kierkegaard

“The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly.”
― Soren Kierkegaard, Provocations: Spiritual Writings of Kierkegaard

“We were created by Love, in love, and for love.”
― Tim Tebow, Shaken: Discovering Your True Identity in the Midst of Life's Storms

“On Radcliffe's headstone, in smaller text beneath his name, was written, Here lieth one who sought truth and light and saw beauty in all things, 1842-1882. Leonard [Gilbert] found himself staring as he often did at the dash between the dates. Within that lichen-laced mark there lay the entire life of a man: his childhood, his loves, his losses and fears, all reduced to a single chiseled line on a piece of stone in a quiet churchyard at the end of a country lane. Leonard wasn't sure whether the thought was comforting or distressing; his opinion changed, depending on the day.”
― Kate Morton, The Clockmaker's Daughter

“And let it ever be remembered, that our works do not precede us to the bar of God, so as to open the door of heaven, nor yet as heralds to clear our way there; but simply as witnesses, to give in their evidences, and deposit their attestation to the reality of our election, redemption, and conversion.”
― Augustus M. Toplady

“The elect are said to be engraven on Christ's hands: now, what is only painted may be rubbed out; or what is held may be let go; but what is graven cannot but remain.”
― Augustus M. Toplady

“A child of God is like a person in a beautiful palace: if there is light in it, he sees the splendid objects around him, and enjoys them; but if the light is removed, he is nevertheless in the palace still, and surrounded with the same splendid objects, as before, though he cannot see them. So, however the believer's frames and sensible comforts may have their ebbs and flows, his state, Godward, is invariably the same.”
― Augustus M. Toplady

“As a skillful physician, from a variety of herbs and plants, some of which are in their own nature poisonous, by a judicious mixture of them together, compounds medicines for the use of man; so God causes all things, even those which are seemingly hurtful, to conspire for the good of His elect.”
― Augustus M. Toplady

“A hypocrite is like a stake, which, having no root, brings forth no genuine lasting fruit; and may easily be plucked up: whereas a true believer is just contrary.”
― Augustus M. Toplady

“Many who have escaped the rocks of gross sin have been cast away on the sands of self-righteousness.”
― Augustus M. Toplady

“In all His dispensations Christ chooses rather to profit His people than to please them.”
― Augustus M. Toplady

“At the risk of being simplistic, a railway metaphor comes to mind. John Wesley's marriage was a train wreck (Wesleyan historian, Henry Rack called it a 'disaster' and 'catastrophe'); [George] Whitefield's was a freight train (satisfactory but functional); and [John] Newton's was a scenic passenger train (enjoyable and relational).”
― Grant Gordon, A Great Blessing to Me: John Newton Encounters George Whitefield

“To be possessed of no more than momentary existence, and to have even that momentary existence filled up with more evil than good; to move, for a point of time, like bubbles on the surface of the world, and then to vanish, or be thrown into a mere blank, and swallowed up in the gulf of non-existence for ever; would not, cannot be consistent with the nature of that God who makes nothing in vain, and whose name is love.”
― Augustus Toplady, Contemplations on the Sufferings, Death and Resurrection of Christ.

“Some are dismissed from life in the dawn of infancy; some in the morning of childhood; others in the noon of youth. The sands of some are continued longer; and a very few are permitted to see the night of what we generally term old age. Not a day, nor an hour; no, not a minute passes, wherein multitudes of all ages are not called away to stand before the holy Lord God. Death, that promiscuous reaper, pays no regard to years or station. The infant of a day, and the man of a century are alike to him; he mows the shooting blade and the mature stem: the growing and the grown unite to swell his harvest and augment his spoils. But is that which we term Death, the offspring of chance, or the result of accident? Surely, no. Death is a scythe! but if I may so speak, it is a scythe in the hand of God. Affliction, sickness, and dissolution, are messengers of His; which come not but at His command.”
― Augustus Toplady, Contemplations on the Sufferings, Death and Resurrection of Christ.

“Though I cannot entirely agree with you in supposing that extreme study has been the cause of my late indisposition, I must yet confess that the hill of science, like that of virtue, is in some instances climbed with labour. But when we get a little way up, the lovely prospects which open the eye make infinite amends for the steepness of the ascent. In short, I am wedded to these pursuits, as a man stipulates to take his wife; viz., for better, for worse, until death us do part. My thirst for knowledge is literally inextinguishable. And if I thus drink myself into a superior world, I cannot help it.”
― Augustus Toplady

“Now, should a man attempt to go to court, clothed in filthy rags, and endeavor to gain admission to the royal presence in such raiment as that, would not he be refused entrance, and driven with indignation from the palace gate?--certainly he would; and can we expect to stand in the hour of death and day of judgment, undaunted before the holy Lord God, arrayed in no better robe, and defended with no better armour than that imperfect righteousness of ours, which the Scripture calls filthy rags?”
― Augustus Toplady, Contemplations on the Sufferings, Death and Resurrection of Christ.

“Recreations are needful at times; but take care of these two things, that your recreations be innocent in themselves, and that you be moderate in your use of them”
― Augustus Toplady, Contemplations on the Sufferings, Death and Resurrection of Christ.

“If we cite the Bible, and yet fail to live according to its codes, the Bible becomes just another book. But when we live it, it becomes powerful. If you believe it, the words of scripture say that we come living epistles in whose life others read the presence of God.”
― Michael Eric Dyson, Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America

“May we clearly discern, and never forget, what a Master we serve! so glorious, that all the angels of light adore him; so gracious, that he spilt his blood even for his enemies; so mighty, that he has all power in heaven and on earth; so faithful, that heaven and earth may pass away, much sooner than one jot or tittle of his word fail.”
― James Hervey