Avery Wong > Recent Status Updates

“When they meant to pray for courage, let them really be trying to feel brave. When they say they are praying for forgiveness, let them be trying to feel forgiven. Teach them to estimate the value of each prayer by their success in producing the desired feeling”

“He therefore refuses to carry them, but there mere affections and habits, to any goals which He sets before them: He leaves them to ‘do it on their own’. And there lies our opportunity. But also, remember, there lies our danger. If they get through this initial dryness successfully, they become much less dependent on emotion and therefore much harder to tempt.”

BANG.

“… help people understand that the more they can recognize their own sin, the more they will experience God’s grace. A life of gratitude for being saved is far more pleasing than a life based on self righteousness over being good.”

“In fact, the term”living sacrifice” is deliberately paradoxical because sacrifices were dead… it’s a way of saying you have to continually be in rhythm of dying to your own interest and living for God.”

Nawww this kind of freaky

“Esther is called Queen Esther fourteen times; thirteen of those happen after she says, "If I perish, I perish."1? She becomes a person of greatness not by trying to make a name for herself, and you will become a person of greatness not by trying to make yourself into one, but by serving the One who said to his Father, "For your sake, thy will be done."”

I really like how they’re explaining the faults of Odysseus. A reminder that even the “best” mortals aren’t God

“So a life of self-glorification makes the unity and love between people impossible.”

Excited to start this book before my full time job starts!!!

“I’d rather be married to you for a single day than live a hundred lifetimes without you.”

“There’s no point trying to dissect the experience of standing in front of a work of art. It can’t be examined or interpolated or explained. It can only be experienced.”

“But really, they did it because every human being has a basic instinct to help each other out. It might not seem that way sometimes, but it's true.”

“Yeah, that's right, Mars, I'm gonna piss and shit on you. That's what you get for trying to kill me all the time.”

I can’t wait to watch how Matt Damon becomes this character in the movie

“[12:15] WATNEY: Look! A pair of
boobs! -> (.Y.)”

Audibly laughed on the plane about this

“forgiveness is a choice. It doesn't arrive on fairy wings; it doesn't descend from the sky for you to take or leave. Forgiveness is an action.”

“Mostly, she Loved how everyone in the room existed in that moment in time together and the tacit agreement that they were all a little better, a little luckier, than everyone out on the sidewalks pursuing less interesting New York attractions.”

“Too often, she looked forward to the end of something—to beginning the remembering—more than the thing itself.”

I write slowly. A letter might take me an hour or more. I do not rush. I think through each sentence. My hand does not get tired. You mustn't rush. When you rush you pen things you didn't mean and you tire. It takes patience to say exactly what one means, to think of the right word… I believe one ought to be precious with communication, Remember: words, especially those written, are immortal.”

“Now that I'm dying it seems much simpler than it ever did before. Living, I mean. There is no parallel universe. There is no "what could have been if only." In some ways this has brought me a great deal of peace. In other ways it is bitter.
How cruel life is only this long. Now that I see clearly, I'd like more time. It's not to be.”

“I tire of people speaking of seasons as if you can count on three months of winter turning out three months of summer on repeat. It's not so. The stretches on the high, windblown road are far commoner than the stopovers in comfort, and aren't we always trying to get back to the happier. times?”

“A woman’s past need not predict her future. She can dance to new music if she chooses—her own music. To hear the tune, she must only stop talking—to herself, I mean. We’re always trying to persuade ourselves of things.”

'But where would we be if we didn't feel [Love]? I think it's the only form of hope we have. For our survival, I mean. What good is any other virtue without love?'

‘Love is not the weakness. People get in its way. People are weak and perilous, not love.'

“‘But then suppose you stepped into one of those rooms,’ he said, ‘and discovered another room within it. And inside that room, another room still. Rooms within rooms within rooms. Isn’t that how it might be, trying to learn Josie’s heart? No matter how long you wandered through those rooms, wouldn’t there always be others you’d not entered?’”

“I didn’t have a religion and I didn’t do team sports. And for a long time, orchestra had been the only place where I felt like part of something bigger than I was—where I was able to strive and at the same time, to forget myself. The loss of that feeling was extremely painful.”

I enjoyed how this author put into words why I love to look for groups of people with like-minded hobbies, values, or interests.

OH MY PLOT TWIST

OH MY PLOT TWIST.

“I’d begun to understand also that this wasn’t a trait peculiar just to Josie; that people often felt the need to prepare a side of themselves to display to passers-by - as they might in a store window - and that such a display needn’t be taken so seriously once the moment had passed.”

“Sometimes,” she said, “at special moments like that, people feel a pain alongside their happiness.”

“And there is perhaps no greater pain than the suffering that comes from speaking plainly but failing to make any sort of meaningful connection with the people who care about you”

Started this book in the Grand Canyon Community Library. Want to finish this book later