Quotes

Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive — Howard Thurman

We love to sing, “I have decided to follow Jesus,” but we don't bother looking to see which way he went. — Frank Stagg

We have very efficiently pared the claws of the Lion of Judah, certified him “meek and mild,” and recommended him as a fitting household pet for pale curates and pious old ladies. To those who knew him, however, he in no way suggested a milk-and-water person; they objected to him as a dangerous firebrand. True, he was tender to the unfortunate, patient with honest inquirers and humble before Heaven; but he insulted respectable clergymen by calling them hypocrites; he referred to King Herod as “that fox”; he went to parties in disreputable company and was looked upon as a “gluttonous man and a wine-bibber, a friend of publicans and sinners”; he assaulted indignant tradesmen and threw them and their belongings out of the Temple; he drove a coach-and-horses through a number of sacrosanct and hoary regulations; he cured diseases by any means that came handy, with a shocking casualness in the matter of other people’s pigs and property; he showed no proper deference for wealth or social position; when confronted with neat dialectical traps, he displayed a paradoxical humor that affronted serious-minded people, and he retorted by asking disagreeably searching questions that could not be answered by rule of thumb. He was emphatically not a dull man in his human lifetime, and if he was God, there can be nothing dull about God either. — Dorothy Sayers

I believe the church should be a community of consequence. — Bill Ramsey

Who has found [Wisdom’s] place? And who has entered her storehouses? Where are the rulers of the nations, and those who lorded it over the animals on earth; those who made sport of the birds of the air, and who hoarded up silver and gold in which people trust, and there is no end to their getting; those who schemed to get silver, and were anxious, but there is no trace of their works? — Baruch 3:15-18

Patience asks us to live the moment to the fullest, to be completely present to the moment, to taste the here and now, to be where we are. When we are impatient, we try to get away from where we are. We behave as if the real thing will happen tomorrow, later, and somewhere else. Be patient and trust that the treasure you are looking for is hidden in the ground on which you stand. — Henri Nouwen

Jesus was not a bird with broken wings. He was a raging tempest who broke all crooked wings. He feared not his persecutors nor his enemies. Free and brave and daring he was. He defied all despots and oppressors. He saw the contagious pustules and amputated them. He muted Evil and he crushed Falsehood and he choked Treachery. — Kahlil Gibran

To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich; to study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly; to listen to stars and birds, to babes and sages, with open heart; to bear all cheerfully, do all bravely, await occasions, hurrying never. In a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common. This is to be my symphony. — William Ellergy Channing

What people don’t realize is how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket when, of course, it is the cross. — Flannery O’Connor

Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures, the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge, has marked the upward surge of mankind and greed, you mark my words, will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the U.S.A. — Stokebroker Gordon Gecko, fictional character played by Michael Douglas, in the 1987 film “Wall Street”