June 1994

Rotary Talk

Smithfield, NC

Quotes on Life & Belief

• Alas for those who never sing, but die with all their music in them.

(Oliver Wendell Holmes)

• Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

            (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

• We should remember that the value of our good works is not based on their number or excellence, but on the love of God, which prompts us to do them.

      (John of the Cross)

• There is no education like adversity.

      (Benjamin Disraeli)

• Anger is seldom without a reason, but seldom with a good one.

(Benjamin Franklin)

• The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who in time of great moral crisis maintain their neutrality.

            (Dante Alighieri)

• Man is what he believes.

      (Anton Chekhov)

• Believing in God means getting down on your knees.

      (Martin Luther)

• The Bible is like a child’s untidy room; you may be shocked when you first open the door.

      (David Jamison-Drake)

• Bigotry may be roughly defined as the anger of those who have on real opinions.

      (G.K. Chesterton)

• It is unnatural for Christianity to be popular.

      (Billy Graham)

• Too late I loved you, O beauty so ancient yet ever new!  Too late I loved you! And, behold, you were within me and I out of myself and there I searched for you.

      (Augustine of Hippo)

• We do not find God, God finds us.

      (Martin Bell)

• Doubt is not the opposite of faith.  Sin is the opposite of faith.  Doubt is the first small infant step toward true and lasting faith. 

      (Robert K. Pierce)

• Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral?  It is because we are not the person involved.

      (Mark Twain)

• Give me the benefit of your convictions if you have any, but keep your doubts to yourself, for I have enough of my own.

      (Johann Wolfgang von Geothe)

• What greater work is there than training the mind and forming the habits of the young?

      (St. John Chrysostom)

• Education without religion, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a cleverer devil.

      (C.S. Lewis)

• A faith that cannot survive collision with the truth is not worth many regrets.

      (Arthur C. Clarke)

• All work that is worth anything is done in faith.

      (Albert Schweitzer)

• Faith is only another word for relationship.  When faith is viewed as relationship it becomes alive, dynamic, and capable of miracles

      (Phil Taylor)

• Without forgiveness no relationship and no faith can survive. 

      (Phil Taylor)

• Genius is the ability to summarize and be brief.

      (Anonymous)

• Beware of genius; after all it is genius which has given us the A-bomb.

(Unknown)

• It is of course our genius which is the single aspect of our humanity that so regularly and consistently fails us.

       (John Bachmann)

• Plato located the soul of man in the head; Christ located it in the heart.

(Jerome)

• Humility is the mother salvation.

       (Bernard of Clairveaux)

• If you do not wish for His kingdom, don’t pray for it.  But if you do, you must do more than pray for it; you must work for it.

      (John Ruskin)

• The tragedy of life is what dies inside a man while he lives.

      (Albert Schweitzer)

• In the evening of our lives we shall be examined in love.

      (John of the Cross)

• Love cures people – both the ones who give it and the ones who receive it.

      (Carl Menninger)

• God is not to be reached or perceived by thought, but only by love.

(Julian of Norwich)

• Marriage is our last best chance to grow up.

            (Joseph Barth)

• For every one hundred men who can stand adversity, there is only one who can stand prosperity.

      (Thomas Carlyle)

• If you want to destroy a nation give it too much – make it greedy, miserable and rich.

      (John Steinbeck)

• The Lord did not promise us a ministry free of trials.  He simply assured us that He had overcome the forces of evil at work in man.

      (John Paul II)

• Make all you can, save all you can, give all you can.

      (John Wesley)

• Next to theology I give to music the highest place and honor.  Music is the art of the prophets, the only art that can calm the agitations of the soul; it is one of the most magnificent and delightful presents God has given us.

      (Martin Luther)

• A sense of Deity is inscribed on every heart.

      (John Calvin)

• Opinion is that exercise of the human will which helps us to make a decision without information.

      (John Erskine)

• Love of one’s country, which is not part of one’s love for humanity is not love, but idolatrous worship.

      (Erich Fromm)

• He who is pious does not contend but teaches in love.

      (Ulrich Zwesigli)

• I lost my mind six different times over the last 30 years, twice I got married and four times I ran for public office.

      (Phil Taylor)

• We need not pray very loud.  God is nearer to us than we think.

      (Brother Lawrence)

• Prayer enlarges the heart until it is capable of containing God’s gift of himself.    

      (Mother Teresa)

• I have so much to do that I must spend several hours in prayer before I am able to do it. 

      (John Wesley)

• Preach the Gospel at all times; if necessary use words.

      (Francis of Assisi)

• My grand point in preaching is to break the hard heart and to heal the broken one.

      (John Newton)

• When I preach I regard neither doctors nor magistrates of whom I have above forty in my congregation; I have all my eyes on the servant men and women and on the children.  And if the learned men are not well pleased with what they hear, well, the door is open.

      (Martin Luther)

• As in Paradise, God walks in the Holy Scriptures seeking man.

(Ambrose)

• Most people are bothered by those passages of Scripture, which they cannot understand; but as for me, I always noticed that the passages in Scripture, which trouble me most, are those that I do understand.

            (Mark Twain)

• Christ has no body on this earth now but yours.

      (Teresa of Avila)

• To be in service to your fellow is to imitate Christ.

      (Unknown)

• Prayer begins in silence, the silence of the heart.

      (Mother Teresa)

• The greatest ideas, the most profound thoughts, the most beautiful poetry and the grandest music are born from the womb of silence.

(William A. Ward)

• Sin is seeing your life through someone else’s eyes.

       (Sebastian Moore)

• There are two questions a man must ask himself.  The first is ‘Where am I going?’ and the second is ‘Who will go with me?’  If you ever get these questions in the wrong order you are in real trouble. 

      (Howard Thurman)

• The present suffering bears and carries in its train the purest understanding.

      (John of the Cross)

• Your theology is what you are when the talking stops and the action starts.

      (Galvin Morris)

• I don’t know anymore about theology than a jack-ass knows about ping-pong; I just know I’m on my way to glory. 

      (Billy Sunday)

• Occupy your minds with good thoughts, or the evening will fill them with bad ones; unoccupied they cannot be.

      (Sir Thomas More)

• If it is not right, do not do it; if it is not true, do not say it.

      (Marcus Aurelius)

• God showed me a little thing the size of a hazelnut in the palm of my hand and it was as round as a ball.  I thought, “What may this be?  And God answered thus:  ‘It is the universe.”

      (Julian of Norwich)

• The modern choice is between non-violence and non-existence.

      (Martin Luther King, Jr.)

• Work is love made visible.

      (Kahlil Gibran)

• It is not creation that changes.  Rather, the one who prays is bent in God’s direction.

      (Martin Bell)

• Nothing can separate us from the love of God.

      (Paul of Tarsus)

• This is my commandment:  Love one another, as I have loved you … you are my friends; if you do what I command you … my command to you is to love one another.

      (Jesus of Nazareth)