Death, Vance Havner

Death can hide but not divide,
thou art but on Christ's other side.
Thou art with Christ and Christ with thee;
united still in Christ are we.

Thomas a Kempis

On the day of Judgment, surely we shall not be asked what we have read, but what we have done; not how well we have spoken, but how well we have lived.

If only their lives had kept pace with their learning. Then their study and reading would have been worthwhile.

True peace of heart, then, is found in resisting passions, not in following them.

Our fervor and progress ought to increase day by day. Yet it is now considered noteworthy if a man can retain even a part of his first fervor. If we did a little violence to ourselves at the start, we should afterwards be able to do all things with ease and joy.

A man ought to root himself so firmly in God that he will not need the consolations of men.

Some, guarded against great temptations, are frequently overcome by small ones in order that, humbled by their weakness in small trials, may not presume upon their strength in great ones.

If, after being admonished once or twice, a person does not amend do not argue with him but commit the whole matter to God that His will and honor may be furthered in all His servants. For God knows well how to turn evil to good. Try to bear patiently with the defects and infirmities of others, whatever they may be, because you also have many a fault which others must endure. If you cannot make yourself what you would wish to be, how can you bend others to your will? We want them to be perfect, yet we do not correct our own faults. We wish them to be severly corrected yet we do not correct ourselves.

Cats & Dogs

"Here's the thing about cats: cats used to be people and they know that they used to be people. Thus the reason for all the attitude. Dogs, on the other hand, are looking forward to being people and believe that by being our 'best friend' they increase their chances of getting there. Dogs have the enthusiastic naivete of the aspirational; cats have the reflexive ennui of the disappointed."

~ Unknown (do you know?)

Democracy killed by apathy ~ Hutchins

“The democratic enterprise is imperiled if any one of us says, ‘I do not have to try to think for myself, or make the most of myself, or become a citizen of the world republic of learning.’ The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment.”

~ Robert Maynard Hutchins, The Great Conversation

Books over our heads needed ~ Mortimer Adler

‎"I think it's terribly important for each of us, everyone, to find a number of books that are over their heads. Because if a person reads only books that are on the level of his head, he can't lift his head up. It's the books that are over one's head, which one only partially understands at first and must work at to understand more, that can possibly elevate you." 

~ Mortimer Adler

Life improved by literature ~ Sir Richard Livingstone

“We are tied down, all our days and for the greater part of our days, to the commonplace. That is where contact with great thinkers, great literature helps. In their company we are still in the ordinary world, but it is the ordinary world transfigured and seen through the eyes of wisdom and genius. And some of their vision becomes our own.”

~ Sir Richard Livingstone

Guided by experience - William James

“There are moments of sentimental and mystical experience . . . that carry an enormous sense of inner authority and illumination with them when they come. But they come seldom, and they do not come to everyone; and the rest of life makes either no connection with them, or tends to contradict them more than it confirms them. Some persons follow more the voice of the moment in these cases, some prefer to be guided by the average results.” 

~ William James