John W > John's Quotes

“We are not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be.”
― C.S. Lewis

“A man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word 'darkness' on the walls of his cell.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

“His heart; some long word at the heart. He is dying of a long word.”
― Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited

“The body is not a task to be completed but a gift we receive from God himself.”
― Matthew Lee Anderson, Earthen Vessels: Why Our Bodies Matter To Our Faith

“When his wife died, for a while it was the end of the world, because part of him had died with her. As the long, slow recovery proceeded, he had gratefully and guiltily accepted the return of equilibrium. But he had not paid attention to a parallel phenomenon: his reversion to what he had been before his marriage. Though changed by whatever he had learned during their years together, and by whatever healing had taken place, he had fallen back into the old patterns of withdrawal. Nursing the dreadful wound of her absence, he had failed to notice the subtler void opening up within himself.”
― Michael D. O'Brien

“It occurred to him that the increasing patience of age was as great a myth as the unalloyed joy of youth. The longer he lived, the less tolerance he had for the patently evil.”
― Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, The Sojourner

“Occasionally he stumbled over the truth, but hastily picked himself up and hurried on as if nothing had happened.”
― William Manchester, The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Defender of the Realm, 1940-1965

“If you cannot read all your books, at any rate handle, or, as it were, fondle them—peer into them, let them fall open where they will, read from the first sentence that arrests the eye, set them back on their shelves with your own hands, arrange them on your own plan so that if you do not know what is in them, you will at least know where they are. Let them be your friends; let them at any rate be your acquaintances.”
― William R. Manchester, The Last Lion: Visions of Glory 1874-1932

“Gamboling is happiness in motion.”
― Joan Jarvis Ellison, Shepherdess: Notes from the Field

“True joy is never the enemy of godly grief. Joy is what trains and equips us to bear it.”
― Hannah K. Grieser, The Clouds Ye So Much Dread: Hard Times and the Kindness of God

“Bringing up children, she thought, was like pouring ginger beer into a tumbler. All went well up to a certain point, and then it all frothed over the top.”
― Elizabeth Goudge, The Rosemary Tree

“Part of the trick of being happy is a refusal to allow oneself to become too nostalgic for the heady triumphs of one's youth.”
― Larry McMurtry, Roads : Driving America's Great Highways

“After a day and a half or so the traveler will realize that crossing the continent by Interstate he gets to know the country about as well as a cable messenger knows the sea bottom.”
― Wallace Stegner, American Places

“Rachell believed passionately in the value of beauty. If she was pressed for time she considered the filling of her bowl with flowers more important for her family's welfare than the making of a cake for tea. On this point her family entirely disagreed with her.”
― Elizabeth Goudge, Island Magic

“Based on the newly discovered function of leptin in muscle, the necessity of consistent exercise to maintain health has never been more important.139 People who have been in a consistent exercise program and have slipped out of the pattern will notice that this was an adverse turning point in their health. Conversely, people who get into a good exercise pattern notice an improvement in health. Individuals”
― Byron J. Richards, Mastering Leptin: Your Guide to Permanent Weight Loss and Optimum Health

“It is certain, I think, that the best government is the one that governs the least. But there is a much-neglected corollary: the best citizen is the one who least needs governing.”
― Wendell Berry, The Long-Legged House

“Every week I counsel young people from solid Christian homes who are undone by their sin. As parents, we are sometimes more invested in protecting our children from the sinful influences of this world than we are in preparing them for the deep sinfulness of their own hearts.”
― Barbara R. Duguid, Extravagant Grace: God's Glory Displayed in Our Weakness

“Proud folk separate themselves from others, judging them... To criticize others we must hold them from us, at arm's length so to speak. And then before you know where you are you've pushed them away and you're the poorer.”
― Elizabeth Goudge, The Rosemary Tree

“Elisandra read while I tried my hand at embroidering a pillowcase that she lent me. The results were execrable. I had no skill with a needle, and no desire to learn, either.

"I wouldn't shame a dog by laying this upon his bed," I remarked, showing Elisandra my efforts. She actually smiled.

"I like it," she said. "I'll put it on one of my pillows."

"Bryan won't let you sleep in the same bed with him if you bring this as your dowry," I said with an attempt at humor.

She bent her head back over her book. "Then stitch me another.”
― Sharon Shinn, Summers at Castle Auburn

“Now his grin lit his face with a sunny halo.”
― Sharon Shinn, Summers at Castle Auburn

“Normal' is a dryer setting.”
― Elizabeth Moon, The Speed of Dark

“Even if a tamed wolf makes a good sheepdog, he will never understand how the sheep feel....You are most fortunate. For having been, as you thought, a coward, and helpless to fight - you know what that is like. You know what bitterness that feeling breeds - you know in your own heart what kind of evil it brings. And so you are most fit to fight it where it occurs.”
― Elizabeth Moon, The Deed of Paksenarrion

“This individual does not know where initiative ends and rocket-propelled idiocy begins.”
― Elizabeth Moon, Marque and Reprisal

“If a military life was long periods of boredom punctuated by moments of stark terror—as one of her instructors had said—then civilian life seemed to be long periods of boredom interrupted by moments of dismal reflection.”
― Elizabeth Moon, Trading in Danger

“Never regret the stupidity of enemies,”
― Elizabeth Moon, Sheepfarmer's Daughter

“Of death I am as certain as any mortal, Ammerlin, but defeat is certain only in despair.”
― Elizabeth Moon, The Deed of Paksenarrion

“If someone means well, but does ill, the ill is still done—and the consequences still exist. Besides, if intent forgives wrong, then any wrongdoer can claim good intent.”
― Elizabeth Moon, The Legacy of Gird

“Of all the trades, my lord Captain, the trade of money itself must be most closely observed. It is too easy to cheat, too easy to shave a coin or pass false coinage, too easy to take as one’s own the money entrusted to us by others. We must be diligent, we must be honest, and we must be unfailingly harsh with those who lie to or steal from those who trust them. Else no one will trust any of us, and when that trust fails, we are all back to trading a cow for two pigs or a shirt for a loaf of bread.”
― Elizabeth Moon, Kings of the North

“Apparently they didn’t realize that people who buy thousands of rounds of ammo are likely to know how to use it. We”
― Elizabeth Moon, Command Decision

“The quietness spread, from gray eyes that held no hatred for those who spat at her face or tasted her blood, from a voice that could scream in pain yet mouth no curses after, that spoke, between screams, in a steady confirmation of all good. Those”
― Elizabeth Moon, The Deed of Paksenarrion