Jim B > Jim's Quotes

“Friendship ... is born at the moment when one man says to another "What! You too? I thought that no one but myself . . .”
― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. — 'Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.' — Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance: An Excerpt from Collected Essays, First Series

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches

“Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.”
― Groucho Marx, The Essential Groucho: Writings For By And About Groucho Marx

“The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.”
― L.P. Hartley, The Go-Between

“There are many statues of men slaying lions, but if only the lions were sculptors there might be quite a different set of statues.”
― Aesop

“Our habits are our friends. Even our bad habits.”
― Georges Bernanos, The Diary of a Country Priest

“The voice of Love seemed to call to me, but it was a wrong number.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, Very Good, Jeeves!

“Let every man shovel out his own snow, and the whole city will be passable," said Gamache. Seeing Beauvoir's puzzled expression he added, "Emerson."

"Lake and Palmer?"

"Ralph and Waldo.”
― Louise Penny, A Fatal Grace

“When someone stabs you it's not your fault that you feel pain.”
― Louise Penny, A Fatal Grace

“We need to stop giving people excuses not to believe in God. You've probably heard the expression 'I believe in God, just not organized religion'. I don't think people would say that if the church truly lived like we are called to live.”
― Francis Chan, Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God

“Christians are like manure: spread them out and they help everything grow better, but keep them in one big pile and they stink horribly.”
― Francis Chan

“Something is wrong when our lives make sense to unbelievers.”
― Francis Chan, Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God

“If a guy were dating my daughter but didn't want to spend the gas money to come pick her up or refused to buy her dinner because it cost too much, I would question whether he were really in love with her In the same way, I question whether many American churchgoers are really in love with God because they are so hesitant to do anything for Him." Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God”
― Francis Chan

“Satan is too hard a master. He would never command as did the Other with divine simplicity: 'Do likewise.' The devil will have no victims resemble him. He permits only a rough caricature, impotent, abject, which has to serve as food for eternal irony, the mordant irony of the depths.”
― Georges Bernanos, The Diary of a Country Priest

“God is the color of water. Water doesn't have a color.”
― James McBride, The Color of Water

“The man was the finest preacher. He could make a frog stand up straight and get happy with Jesus.”
― James McBride, The Color of Water

“But we don't have to react. That's what I'm saying. A police force, like a government, should be above that. Just because we're provoked doesn't mean we have to act. -- Still Life”
― Louise Penny

“Every year the hunters shot cows and horses and family pets and each other. And unbelievably, they sometimes shot themselves, perhaps in a psychotic episode where they mistook themselves for dinner”
― Louise Penny, Still Life

“We are settling for a Christianity that revolves around catering to ourselves when the central message of Christianity is actually about abandoning ourselves.”
― David Platt, Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream

“When someone you love dies, and you're not expecting it, you don't lose her all at once; you lose her in pieces over a long time—the way the mail stops coming, and her scent fades from the pillows and even from the clothes in her closet and drawers. Gradually, you accumulate the parts of her that are gone. Just when the day comes—when there's a particular missing part that overwhelms you with the feeling that she's gone, forever—there comes another day, and another specifically missing part.”
― John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany

“What is hardest to accept about the passage of time is that the people who once mattered the most to us wind up in parentheses.”
― John Irving, The Cider House Rules

“Keep passing the open windows.”
― John Irving, The Hotel New Hampshire

“Goodnight you princes of Maine, you kings of New England.”
― John Irving, The Cider House Rules

“It is hard work and great art to make life not so serious.”
― John Irving, The Hotel New Hampshire

“Logic is relative.”
― John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany

“How easy it is to hate oneself! True grace is to forget. Yet if pride could die in us, the supreme grace would be to love oneself in all simplicity—as one would love any one of those who themselves have suffered and loved in Christ.”
― George Bernanos

“In winter the very ground seemed to reach up and grab the elderly, yanking them to earth as though hungry for them.”
― Louise Penny, Bury Your Dead

“A family is one of nature's solubles; it dissolves in time like salt in rainwater.”
― Pat Conroy, The Prince of Tides

“But, as I watch this film, I often think that the boy did not know what he was really running toward, that it was not the end zone which awaited him. Somewhere in that ten second dash the running boy turned to metaphor and the older man could see it where the boy couldn not. He would be good at running, always good at it, and he would always run away from the things that hurt him, from the people who loved him, and from the friends empowered to save him. But where do we run when there are no crowds, no lights, no end zones? Where does a man run? the coach said, studying the films of himself as a boy. Where can a man run when he has lost the excuse of games? Where can a man run or where can he hide when he looks behind him and sees that he is only pursued by himself?”
― Pat Conroy, The Prince of Tides