As the biggest library if it is in disorder is not as useful as a small but well-arranged one, so you may accumulate a vast amount of knowledge but it will be of far less value to you than a much smaller amount if you have not thought it over for you...
Will God ever ask you to do something you are not able to do? The answer is yes--all the time! It must be that way, for God's glory and kingdom. If we function according to our ability alone, we get the glory; if we function according to the power of...
We gallop through our lives like circus performers balancing on two speeding side-by-side horses--one foot is on the horse called "fate," the other on the horse called "free will." And the question you have to ask every day is--which horse is which? ...
I’m scared of him. I’m disgusted by the vile monster he becomes, this beast he lets out. But I still love him. I’d still do anything for him. I can’t just turn off my heart. I want to, I do, but I can’t. I love him with everything I have an...
Everyone will be forgotten, nothing we do will make any difference, and all good endeavours, even the best, will come to naught. Unless there is God. If the God of the Bible exists, and there is a True Reality beneath and behind this one, and this li...
All the queens of my acquaintance have children, some three, some seven, and some as many as twelve; and my queen has not one. I feel ill-used." So he made up his mind to be cross with his wife about it. But she bore it all like a good patient queen ...
Every day we make our way through a moral forest, along pathways ever branching. Often we get lost. When the array of paths before us is so perplexing that we can't make a choice, or won't, we can hope that we will be given a sign to guide us. A reli...
For a while the hobbits continued to talk and think of the past journey and of the perils that lay ahead; but such was the virtue of the land of Rivendell that soon all fear and anxiety was lifted from their minds. The future, good or ill, was not fo...
Everything he had ever done that had been better left undone. Every lie he had told — told to himself, or told to others. Every little hurt, and all the great hurts. Each one was pulled out of him, detail by detail, inch by inch. The demon stripped...
Do you really mean to tell me the only reason you try to be good is to gain God's approval and reward, or to avoid his disapproval and punishment? That's not morality, that's just sucking up, apple-polishing, looking over your shoulder at the great s...
When Dad was in the middle of a description of the hotel’s laundry facility, I interrupted. “Why haven’t you told me today, like you do every day, that Mom’s going to be better soon?” He looked up then. His gaze locked with mine and held a ...
God isn't the son of Memory; He's the son of Immediate Experience. You can't worship a spirit in spirit, unless you do it now. Wallowing in the past may be good literature. As wisdom, it's hopeless. Time Regained is Paradise Lost, and Time Lost is Pa...
According to Benedict's scheme, the community reads through... the entire book of Psalms every week. The monks are therefore exposed... to all the despairing, doubtful, bitter, vindictive, jingoistic, nationalistic, and seemingly racist passages in t...
All my life I thought that the story was over when the hero and heroine were safely engaged -- after all, what's good enough for Jane Austen ought to be good enough for anyone. But it's a lie. The story is about to begin, and every day will be a new ...
When I got to the States and started going to an American high school, which I did for an extremely short time, I thought everyone around me was insane, the way they talked about their parents. I thought the parents were insane too, the way they hand...
I wanted to sip my daily Starbucks coffee as I got to work early (no later than 11:00 am), have a late lunch (1:00-4:00), and work late (5:01) every day (except Thursdays and Fridays). I wanted a life so good even Scarface would want to scarf it up.
Every friendship travels at sometime through the black valley of despair. This tests every aspect of your affection. You lose the attraction and the magic. Your sense of each other darkens and your presence is sore. If you can come through this time,...
Probably all of us, writers and readers alike, set out into exile, or at least into a certain kind of exile, when we leave childhood behind...The immigrant, the nomad, the traveler, the sleepwalker all exist, but not the exile, since every writer bec...
I think it's better if you rely on the fact you belong together, instead of having to reinvent your togetherness every day. People who say right off the bat that they don't want to take risks because their relationship is going to dissolve anyway - w...
People spend their entire lives fearing the very thing you apparently crave. They do anything they can to delay the process or fool themselves into believing it’s farther away than it actually is. With every passing year, with every milestone, they...
We keep making decisions, every day, half without thinking, half against our will. If we don't fight back, if we allow ourselves to change, to be changed, then once it's done we have to do other things, and on and on until the person we wanted to be ...
