Incidentally #7
As the bee extracts sweets from the bitterest plants, so the patient and resigned spirit derives instruction and even happiness from the severest misfortunes and sorest trials.
—Mrs. L. G. Abell. The Skillful Housewife’s Book
There should be priests to remind men that they will one day die. I only say that at certain epochs, it is necessary to have another kind of priests, called poets, to remind men that they are not dead yet.
—G. K. Chesterton. Manalive
Beauty and ugliness flow naturally into the world from the content or emptiness of the soul.
—Fr. J. Brankin, “The Cult of Ugliness in America”
Love is an exotic; it is not a plant which will flourish naturally in human soil, it must be watered from above. Love to Jesus is a flower of a delicate nature, and if it received no nourishment but that which could be drawn from the rock of our hearts, it would soon wither.
—Charles H. Spurgeon
Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.
—Sir Winston S. Churchill
Putting first things first is the key to the health of second things. Now, beauty is a great thing, but it’s a second thing. It is very good, it is a form of goodness, but it’s not as good as moral goodness. So the worship of beauty for beauty’s sake, or art for art’s sake, will not only destroy the true worship of God, but also true art.
—C. S. Lewis, First and Second Things
Study of nature deepens the mystery and charm, because it removes the horizon farther off.
—John Burroughs, “A Sharp Lookout”
You would be very ashamed if you knew what the experiences you call setbacks, upheavals, pointless disturbances, and tedious annoyances really are. You would realize that your complaints about them are nothing more or less that blasphemies—though that never occurs to you. Nothing happens to you except by the will of God, and yet God’s beloved children curse it because they do not know it for what it is.
—Jean-Pierre Caussade
I love best to have each thing in its season only, and enjoy doing without at all other times.
—Henry Thoreau, journal entry dated December 5, 1856
The ability to speak exactly is intimately related to the ability to know exactly.
—Wendell Berry, “Imagination in Place”
Here I should like to remark for the sake of princes and princesses in general, that it is a low and contemptible thing to refuse to refuse to confess a fault, or even an error. If a true princess has done wrong, she is always uneasy until she has had an opportunity of throwing the wrongness away from her by saying, “I did it; and I wish I had not; and I am sorry for having done it.” So you see that there is some ground for supposing that Curdie was not a miner only, but a prince as well.. Many such instances have been known in the world’s history.
—George MacDonald, The Princess and the Goblins
Maternal love is the first agent of education.
—Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, Swiss pedagogue
Only saints and sages ought to be robbed. They may be stripped and pillaged; but not the poor little worldly people of the things that are their poor little pride.
—G. K. Chesterton, Manalive
You may object that by speaking of simplicity and beauty I am introducing aesthetic criteria of truth, and I frankly admit that I am strongly attracted to the simplicity and beauty of the mathematical schemes which nature presents us. You must have felt this too: the almost frightening simplicity and wholeness of the relationship, which nature suddenly spreads out before us.
—Wemer Karl Heisenberg, communication to Albert Einstein
Accuracy is, in every case, advantageous to beauty, and just reasoning to delicate sentiment. In vain would we exalt one by depreciating the other.
—David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
It does not do to leave a dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him.
—J. R. R. Tolkien, The Hobbit
Who is strong? He who conquers his bad habits.
—Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanac
In the things of science, in the things of art, in the things of practical every-day life, his God doth instruct her and doth teach her. Let this be the mother’s key to the whole of the education of each boy and each girl, not of her children; the divine Spirit does not work with nouns of multitude, but with each single child. Because he is infinite, the whole world is not too great a school for this indefatigable Teacher, and because He is infinite, He is able to give the whole time to each one of his multitudinous pupils. We do not sufficiently rejoice in the wealth that the infinite nature of our God brings to each of us.
—Charlotte M. Mason, Parents and Children
It is not from ourselves that we learn to be better than we are.
—Wendell Berry
I consider myself lucky if, in the course of a season, I can pick up two or three facts in natural history that are new to me. To have a new delight in an old or familiar fact is not always easy, and is perhaps quite as much to be desired. The familiar we always have with us; to see it with fresh eyes so as to find a new pleasure in it,—that is a great point.
—John Burroughs, “Two Birds’-Nests”
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ANONYMOUS said...
The ability to speak exactly is intimately related to the ability to know exactly.—Wendell Berry, “Imagination in Place”
I guess this summarizes why their few, yet razor-sharp, precise words are so effective in helping us to see the truth.
Tuesday, February 21, 2012 01:41 PM
BIG DADDY said...
The quote by Jean-Pierre Caussade hits very close to home. I have been educated by time to realize that very often God’s plan is different than mine. God has been gracious many times to allow me to see his purposes in “...setbacks, upheavals, pointless disturbance...” However, I need to learn to be content with his will during these times even if he chooses not to reveal His purposes.
Thursday, February 23, 2012 10:54 PM
Tuesday, February 21, 2012