I read a bit of the Icelandic sagas. They're fascinating in that they are completely ordinary. The farmer will go off into the hills and fight a troll, and then go back and do ordinary things. It's an odd mix of fantasy and reality.
There is no power like that of prevailing prayer - of Abraham pleading for Sodom, Jacob wrestling in the stillness of the night, Moses standing in the breach, Hannah intoxicated with sorrow, David heartbroken with remorse and grief, Jesus in sweat an...
Commitment doesn't have conditions. A compassionate samurai follows through whether it feels good or not; average people do what they feel like doing.
As long as you allow your past to haunt you, you'll never be free to pursue your future. You won't even be able to focus on your present.
But he did not believe ordinary citizens created art. True art was anomalous; it was a rare mutation. It didn't happen simply because one willed it so. He thought it an utter and exasperating waste of an ordinary man's time.
The genome is as complicated and indeterminate as ordinary life, because it is ordinary life. This should come as a relief. Simple determinism, whether of the genetics or environmental kind, is a depressing prospect for those with a fondness for free...
God is constantly on the move. I cannot stay where I am and follow God at the same time; responding requires movement.
While most activists could use a good dose of gentleness, I think most believers could use a good dose of holy anger.
Few people are interested in a religion that has nothing to say to the world and offers them only life after death, when what people are really wondering is whether there is life before death.
When we begin enacting the new world, the nations will follow. Nations will not lead us to peace; it is people who will lead the nation to peace as they begin to humanize the nations.
The lives of the thirty thousand children who die of starvation each day is like 6 september 11ths every single day, a silent tsunami that happens every week.
No one knows what path you should follow except yourself. You are your own wise teacher. You are your own Guru.
It always bothers me when I hear Rwanda's genocide described as a product of "ancient tribal hatreds." I think this is an easy way for Westerners to dismiss the whole thing as a regrettable but pointless bloodbath that happens to primitive brown peop...
if people do not have responsibility, do not expect them to behave responsibly.
...we need to stop plotting the course and instead just land the plane on our plans to make a difference by getting to the "do" part of faith.
I understood that I might fail, but I wouldn't let it happen because I changed my compass along the way.
They chose to be different. And in doing so, they proved that through struggle, sacrifice and service, staggering personal transformation is possible.
It was only by focusing on creating joy in her life that I discovered the greatest feeling of happiness in my own.
I feel like a little tug in a great storm. But I'm fastened to a great ship on ahead. It's going into port and can't lose it's way.
The constitution is either a superior paramount law, unchangeable by ordinary means, or it is on a level with ordinary legislative acts, alterable when the legislature shall please to alter it. It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial...
Given Pounds and five years, and an ordinary man can in the ordinary course, without any undue haste or putting any pressure upon his taste, surround himself with books, all in his own language, and thence forward have at least one place in the world...
