What'll we do with ourselves this afternoon? And the day after that, and the next thirty years?
The ideal of character always runs beyond the attainment.
Conscience is what? It is putting together a moral act and a moral ideal, and measuring the act by the ideal. It is putting this moral act which you do alongside the eternal laws of God, and seeing how it stands by those laws of God.
Every man's life is, consciously or unconsciously, a quest for the infinite and the eternal reality.
If the impure and the unjust, the drunkard and the licentious, are loathsome to us, what must be the infinite loathing of an infinitely pure Spirit for those who are worldly and selfish, licentious and cruel, ambitious and animal! But with this great loathing is a great pity. And the pity conquers the loathing, appeases it, satisfies it, is reconciled with it, only as it redeems the sinner from his loathsomeness, lifts him up from his degradation, brings him to truth and purity, to love and righteousness; for only thus is he or can he be brought to God.
How few of us appreciate the fact that a very great deal of physical suffering in after life comes from bad mental training in childhood! I do not mean suffering of an imaginary kind; I mean disease which may entirely ruin a life which might have been of use to the world, and which surely would have been happier but for the lost health. Many a chronic invalid might have preserved his health had he been taught to use his brain properly when a child.
A miracle no longer seems to me a manifestation of extraordinary power, but an extraordinary manifestation of ordinary power. God is always showing himself.
Which are you drinking? The water or the wave?
But I couldn't help myself, couldn't help the way I felt as I recalled the bliss and rush of a vampire's bite.
You're in the car, you're talking to somebody, the radio's on, music's playing, you're not really listening to it; you're aware of it; that's passive.
I think I look cool. I don't know about the other three but I look cool, I am cool.