SAYINGS OF THE WISE

<<--- G. K. Chesterton had much to say that was worthwhile. You'll find a little of it below.

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A

ACHIEVEMENT

The only people who achieve much are those who want knowledge so badly that they seek it while the conditions are still unfavorable. Favorable conditions never come. C. S. Lewis.

ACTION

I have never heard anything about the resolutions of the apostles, but a great deal about their acts. Horace Mann.

[God] seems to do nothing of himself which he can delegate to His creatures. C. S. Lewis.

AGING

It is foolish to resent growing old. Many are denied the privilege. Speaker’s Desk Book.

AIM

What we earnestly desire to be, that in some sense we are. Anna Jameson.

APOLOGETICS

We need men and women who are willing to compete with secularists in defense of Christ and His truth. R. J. Sproul.

ATHEISM

Nobody talks so constantly about God as those who insist there is no God. Heywood Broun.

When a man ceases to believe in God, he doesn’t believe in nothing. He believes in anything. G. K. Chesterton.

AUTHORSHIP

He who has published an injurious book sins in his very grave, corrupts others while he is rotting himself. Robert South.

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B

BEHAVIOR

Every man is a priest, even involuntarily; his conduct is an unspoken sermon which is forever preaching to others; but there are priests of Baal, of Moloch, and of all the false gods. Henri F. Amiel.

BELIEF

Some things have to be believed to be seen. Portrait of America.

BLESSINGS

Reflect upon your present blessings of which every man has many; not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some Charles Dickens.

BLINDNESS

We are indeed a blind race, and the next generation, blind to its own blindness will be amazed at ours. L. L. Whyte quoted by Stanley L. Jaki.

BOOKS

At least one half of all printed material need never have appeared at all. Schneider.

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C

CARELESSNESS

Every difficulty slurred over will be a ghost to disturb your repose later on. Frederick Chopin.

CHANGE

It is the men of the old order who most clearly see the implications of the new. Richard M. Weaver.

CHARACTER

Reputation is what men and women think of us; character is what God and the angels know of us. Thomas Paine.

CHRISTIANITY

Christianity is true, and its truth will be discovered anywhere you look very far. George Gilder.

Christianit doctrine is not a set of rules, but one, vast, interlocking rational structure. Dorothy L. Sayers.

CIVILIZATION

The uncivilized world can best be defined as a familiar prison; civilization is the opening of doors to infinity. Paul Johnson.

If a vehical is to move forward on a course which its driver has set, it must be borne along on wheels that turn monotonously round and round. While civilizations rise and fall and in falling, give rise to others, some purposeful enterprise, higher than theirs, may all the time be making headway, and, in a divine plan, the learning that comes through the suffering caused by the failures of civilization may be the sovereign means of progress. Arnold J. Toynbee.

A nation is born stoic and dies epicurean. Will Durant.

>From barbarism to civilization requires a century; from civilization to

barbarism needs but a day. Will Durant.

CLERGY

A saintly clergy makes a virtuous flock, a virtuous clergy a respectable laity, and a merely respectable clergy a godless people. Blanc de St. Bonnet

CONSCIENCE

In matters of conscience, the law of the majority has no place. Mohandas K. Gandhi.

CONSECRATION

God needs three talents: a will given over to him, willing service, persistence in spite of failure. Howard Atwood Kelly.

CONTROVERSY

It were endless to dispute upon everything that is disputable. William Penn.

CONVERSION

He who is truly converted, is converted a thousand thousand times. Dan Graves.

CORRUPTION

It is the best things that can be most vilely corrupted. It takes a beautiful woman to make a really successful prostitute. Harry Blamires.

It has been often said that power corrupts. But it is perhaps equally important to realize that weakness, too, corrupts. Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many. Hatred, malice, rudeness, intolerance and suspicion are the fruits of weakness. Eric Hoffer.

COURAGE

There is not really any courage at all in attacking hoary or antiquated things any more than in offering to fight one’s grandmother. The really courageous man is he who defies tyrannies as young as the morning and superstitions fresh as the first flowers. G. K. Chesterton.

Boldness becomes rarer the higher the rank. Karl von Clausewitz.

He only is brave who has the courage to do right. Matthew Fontaine Maury.

COURTS

The more you allow the courts to clarify things the worse you make them. Henry Bourassa.

CRIME

It takes an extraordinary worker indeed to give as much to the community as the criminal takes away. George Gilder.

We owe more consideration to the community endangered by crime than to criminals endangering the community. Will Durant.

CRITICISM

..if you encourage every individual to let the imagination loose upon all subjects, without any restraint from a sense of his own weakness, and his subordinate rank in the long scheme of things, then there is nothing of all that the opinion of ages has agreed to regard as excellent and venerable which would not be exposed to destruction at the hands of rationalistic criticism. John Morley.

CROSSES

The merits of Christ are vastly more potent when they bring crosses than when they bring remissions. Martin Luther.

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D

DARK AGES

What matters at this stage is the construction of local forms of community within which civility and the intellectual and moral life can be sustained through the new dark ages which are already upon us. Alasdair MacIntyre.

There will be the twentieth century equivalent of the dark ages. Malcolm Muggeridge.

DEMOCRACY

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can exist only until the voters discover they can vote themselves largess out of the public treasury. Alexander Fraser Tyler.

DIGNITY

No race can prosper till it learns there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem. Booker T. Washington DOUBT

There lives more faith in honest doubt, believe me, than in half the creeds. Alfred Lord Tennyson.

DUTY

The world might stop in ten minutes; meanwhile, we are to go on doing our duty. The great thing is to be found at one’s post as a child of God, living each day as though it were our last, but planning as though the world might last a hundred years. C. S. Lewis.

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F

FREE WILL

Every man builds his world in his own image. He has the power to choose, but no power to escape the necessity of choice. If he abdicates his power, he abdicates the status of man, and the grinding chaos of the irrational is what he achieves as his sphere of existence–by his own choice. Ayn Rand.

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H

HISTORY

Those who do not know the past do not know the present. Dan Graves.

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I

INFORMATION AGE

Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information? T. S. Eliot.

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M

MEMORY

Memory will be the feul of Hell. A. M. Hills.

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P PERFECTION

The mark of a saint is not perfection but consecration. A saint is not a man without faults, but a man whose heart has been given without reserve to God. Bishop Westcott.

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R

ROMAN CATHOLICISM

The Roman Catholic church which used to rpesent itself as the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church, appears now as a pluralistic, permissive, ecumenical and evolutionary ecclesial group. Malachi Martin (a Roman Catholic author).

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S

SUFFERING

Christianity has an enormous advantage over every other religion in the world. It is the only religion that gives value to evil and suffering. Dorothy L. Sayers.

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T

TRUTH

To fear to face an issue is to believe that the worst is true. Ayn Rand.

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U

UNDERSTANDING

Virtue–even attempted virtue–brings light; indulgence brings fog. C. S.Lewis.

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W

WORLD, THE

The world is whatever cools our affection for Christ. quoted by F.W. Boreham.