“The truth that many people never understand, until it is too late, is that the more you try to avoid suffering the more you suffer because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you in proportion to your fear of being hurt.”
Thomas Merton quoted as standalone “WORDS OF WISDOM” in email teaser from Epoch Times January 18, 2023
“I believe in God as I believe the sun has risen, not because I can see it, but because by way of it I can see everything else.”
C.S. Lewis, quoted in Federalist Patriot No. 04-37 15 September 2004 from Federalist.com
“If you try to do without the supernatural you will get the superstitious.”
G.K. Chesterton in New York Sun Jan. 5 1919, quoted in “Chesterton for Today” in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 26 #1 (Sept.-Oct. 2022)
“Alfred North Whitehead, wisely wrote that the only simplicity to be trusted is the simplicity that is on the far side of complexity.”
Richard John Neuhaus’s intro to Allan Carlson, Family Questions: Reflections on the American Social Crisis p. x. [and referring back explicitly to Paul Ricoeur’s second naivete quoted here on March 24, 2023].
“‘God Will Never Give You More Than You Can Handle In Life,’ Says Man Unfamiliar With God, Life”
Headline on Babylon Bee piece Oct. 8, 2022 [https://babylonbee.com/news/god-will-never-give-you-more-than-you-can-handle-in-life-says-man-unfamiliar-with-god-life].
“A man that flies from his fear may find that he has only taken a short cut to meet it.”
Widely available online attributed to J.R.R. Tolkien, which is partly true, but more properly it is the character Sador to Túrin in The Children of Húrin acccording to this commendably persnickety website: https://thetolkienist.com/2014/10/10/thanks-babble-get-10-tolkien-quotes-wrong/
“The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury.”
Marcus Aurelius, quoted as standalone “WORDS OF WISDOM “ in Epoch Times email teaser Dec. 17, 2022 without further attribution.
“Every Whit Sunday, Christians are reminded that the day of Pentecost is a historical fact – just as much as Christ’s birth, his miracles, his death on the cross, and literal physical resurrection, and his ascension. This needs to be emphasized more than ever today – our gospel and our salvation is not a mere teaching or a philosophy, but primarily a series of acts, with meaning and purpose. We should never lose sight of the historicity of what we are considering here. So what we read in Acts 2 is something that literally happened in the way that is described. Luke was primarily an historian and his concern was to give to Theophilus, to whom he had already written his gospel, a further account of the continuing action and activity of the Lord Jesus Christ; and so he is dealing here with something that belongs solidly and purely to the realm of history. What happened in Acts 2, as the records makes so plain and clear, was that the early church was baptized with the Holy Spirit.”
Martyn Lloyd-Jones Joy Unspeakable: Power & Renewal in the Holy Spirit