Don't tell me peace has broken out.

I deserve respect for the things I did not do.

Ill fortune seldom comes alone.

And the heart that is soonest awake to the flowers Is always the first to be touch'd by the thorns.

Here is the devil-and-all to pay.

Curious things, habits. People themselves never knew they had them.

Feast of the Birth of John the Baptist "Thou shalt not" is the beginning of wisdom. But the end of wisdom, the new law, is, "Thou shalt." To be Christian is to be old? Not a bit of it. To be Christian is to be reborn, and free, and unafraid, and immortally young.

Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Seek what they sought.

More marriages might survive if the partners realized that sometimes the better comes after the worse.

Nothing ends nicely, that's why it ends.

Doubt, rather than faith, is high among the causes of the religious boom. And the church's response to this current situation will reveal, better than anything else, our faith in God -- or our faithlessness. If we churchmen interpret such pervasive doubt as a threat, then we will do as the church has done so often in the past: we will substitute the church for God, and make our church-centered activities into an ersatz kingdom of God. Our faithlessness will be evident in the easy paraphrase of the hard truth of the gospel, and in the lapse from the critical loyalty that God requires of us, into the vague and corrupting sentimentalism that has so marred American Protestantism. Or the church can interpret the present religious situation as a promise, as God's recall of His people to a new reformation. Our faithfulness to God-in-Christ will be manifest in the willingness to be honest with ourselves and with the gospel. Then we may view the church, not as an end in itself, but as the point of departure into the world for which the Son of God died. Which will it be?

This is the very perfection of a man, to find out his own imperfection.

History is a set of lies agreed upon by the victors.

Many have quarreled about religion that never practiced it.

Nothing is so swift as calumny; nothing is more easily uttered; nothing more readily received; nothing more widely dispersed.

And wanting the right rule they take chalke for cheese, as the saying is.

The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot.

One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say.

Makes a swan-like end, Fading in music. -The Merchant of Venice. Act iii. Sc. 2.

Don't pray for easy lives; pray to be stronger people. Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers; pray for powers equal to your tasks. Then the doing of your work shall be no miracle, but you shall be a miracle. Every day you shall wonder at yourself, at the richness of life which has come to you by the grace of God.