Phil Kline

“While other worldviews lead us to sit in the midst of life’s joys, foreseeing the coming sorrows, Christianity empowers its people to sit in the midst of this world’s sorrows, tasting the coming joy.”
― Timothy Keller, Walking with God through Pain and Suffering

“I sometimes pray not for self-knowledge in general but for just so much self knowledge at the moment as I can bear and use at the moment; the little daily dose.”
― C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer

“He had never thought himself a great sinner before but he saw now that his true depravity had been hidden from him lest it cause him despair. He realized that he was forgiven for sins from the beginning of time, when he had conceived in his own heart the sin of Adam, until the present, when he had denied poor Nelson. He saw that no sin was too monstrous for him to claim as his own, and since God loved in proportion as He forgave, he felt ready at that instant to enter Paradise.”
― Flannery O'Connor, A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories

“That was the sort of thing crazy people did—instinctively choosing the experiences that confirmed their own negative attitudes.”
― Michel Faber, The Book of Strange New Things