As in all great tragedies, the agent of destruction lies within the protagonist’s character.
“It is not what a man does that determines whether his work is sacred or secular, it is why he does it.”
― The Pursuit of God
― The Pursuit of God
“The Christian says, 'Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire: well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or to be unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage. I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that country and to help others to do the same.”
― Mere Christianity
― Mere Christianity
“In conclusion,” he said, “one may safely say that it would be no sin if statesmen learned enough of history to realize that no system which implies control of society by privilege seekers has ever ended in any other way than collapse.” To fail to learn from such “blunders of the past,” he said, was to end up on a course toward “another war and chaos.”
― In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin
― In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin
“That Newton shuddered now [at slavery] is a testimony to they way a strong social movement can awaken a conscience..”
― Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves
― Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves
“In the near term, such compromises made possible a continental union of North and South that provided bountiful benefits to freeborn Americans. But in the long run, the Founders’ failure to put slavery on a path of ultimate extinction would lead to massive military conflict on American soil—the very sort of conflict whose avoidance was, as we shall now see, literally the primary purpose of the Constitution of 1788.”
― America's Constitution: A Biography
― America's Constitution: A Biography
1001 Children's Books You Must Read Before You Grow Up
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This is a group for those who want to take on the less-daunting task of reading all of the books from Julia Eccleshare's 1001 Children's Books You Mus ...more
Amy ’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Amy ’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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