“What, gracious God, is man! that there should be such inconsistency and perfidiousness in his conduct?”
George Washington in George Washington: A Collection compiled and edited by W.B. Allen
“‘Each of us is interested in himself whether he wishes it or not, whether he thinks himself important or not, and for the simple reason that each of us is both the subject and the protagonist of his own nontransferable life.’”
José Ortega y Gasset in Man and Crisis, quoted in Leonard Read Let Freedom Reign
“Many of the Righteous Gentiles were, along with those they were rescuing, captured and killed. Their names have been lost to history, but not to God.”
Richard John Neuhaus in First Things November 2003
“There is an old saying that a man is a fool who can’t be angry, but a man is wise who won’t be angry.”
Dale Carnegie How to Stop Worrying and Start Living
“You would think men had sworn allegiance to crime!”
Jupiter in Ovid’s Metamorphoses (specifically the 1st story “Lycaon” about a werewolf )
“If you betray yourself, if you say untrue things, if you act out a lie, you weaken your character.”
Jordan Peterson on Instagram (all caps in the post) Nov. 18, 2020
“To top off this public relations fiasco [getting lowly Mary pregnant, a poor girl despite her descent, then leaving her to explain the mess], this descent from the heavenly realm, we have the actual birth of the Son of God. What a botched, low-budget affair that was! Unbelievable! Born in a stable. The son of God in a manger – a feeding trough for slobbering cows! Incredible.”
David Kitz Psalms Alive! (regarding many ways God got his hands dirty lifting us out of the mire of our sins)
“Good soldiers, who both love and trust their general, frequently march with more gaiety and alacrity to the forlorn station, from which they never expect to return, than they would to one where there was neither difficulty nor danger. In marching to the latter, they could feel no other sentiment than that of the dullness of ordinary duty: in marching to the former, they feel that they are making the noblest exertion which it is possible for them to make.”
Adam Smith in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, arguing that people shouldn’t have trouble facing disaster knowing God is good