Cache

“Each people is, I believe, inclined to believe it is the purpose of history, that all that has happened is leading to now, to this world, this country. Few of us see ourselves as fleeting phantoms on a much wider screen, or that our great cities may someday be dug from the ruins by archeologists of the future. Surely, the citizens and the rulers of Babylon and Rome did not see themselves as a passing phase. Each in its time believed it was the end-all of the world’s progression. I have no such feeling. Each age is a day that is dying, each one a dream that is fading. Someday, men—or some other intelligent creatures—will stand on the sites of New York or Los Angeles and wonder if anyone ever lived there.”
― Louis L'Amour, Education of a Wandering Man: A Memoir

“The veil of forgetfulness that divides eternity in two has its own powerful justifications. Philip Barlow, a modern religious scholar, has written eloquently of the surprising value of the veil: My impression is that, informed and animated by a thoughtful faith in a wider horizon, the veil quite properly funnels the bulk of our attention to the here and now: on the time, people, problems, and opportunities of this day, this moment. Despite glimpses of eternal purposes that come as gifts and hopes, my life unfolds in tremendous, all-but-complete ignorance of our mysterious universe. There is no proving God to others. Ultimate reality is not something we know; it is something in which we put our trust. . . . The veil is not a curse or cause for existential lament. It is necessary to our stage of progression as beings. While we search, listen, and pray for comfort and direction beyond our sphere, the veil—the necessary epistemic distance from this “beyond”—affords us freedom for independent action not possible if we could literally and readily see God smiling or frowning at each move. And freedom independently to discern and choose between good and evil (morality) and good and bad (quality) is at the core of our purpose, as the powerful mythos of Genesis suggests. The”
― Terryl L. Givens, The God Who Weeps: How Mormonism Makes Sense of Life

“Depend upon it, behind all great achievement there lies great toil: nothing that is worth doing is done easily.”
― Lieutenant General Stephen Mansfield, Mansfield's Book of Manly Men: An Utterly Invigorating Guide to Being Your Most Masculine Self

“We may, indeed, be sure that perfect chastity—like perfect charity—will not be attained by any merely human efforts. You must ask for God’s help. Even when you have done so, it may seem to you for a long time that no help, or less help than you need, is being given. Never mind. After each failure, ask forgiveness, pick yourself up, and try again. Very often what God first helps us towards is not the virtue itself but just this power of always trying again. For however important chastity (or courage, or truthfulness, or any other virtue) may be, this process trains us in habits of the soul which are more important still. It cures our illusions about ourselves and teaches us to depend on God.”
― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity