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61 " Be at peace with being lousy for a while. Chesterton once said that anything worth doing was worth doing badly. He was right. Only an insufferable egoist expects to be brilliant first time out. "
― Douglas Wilson , Wordsmithy: Hot Tips for the Writing Life
62 " Beware of anyone who claims to be neutral, for they always have an agenda. "
― Douglas Wilson , What I Learned in Narnia
63 " Pace yourself in your reading. A little bit every day really adds up. If you read during sporadic reading jags, the fits and starts will not get you anywhere close to the amount of reading you will need to do. It is far better to walk a mile a day than to run five miles every other month. Make time for reading, and make a daily habit of it, even if it is a relatively small daily habit. "
64 " For the people of God, the Word of God leaves pleasant bruises. "
― Douglas Wilson , Exhortations: A Call to Maturity in Worship
65 " I have often told people that they need to evaluate their lives by the video, and not by the snapshot. That is, they should not just look at one moment in time, but rather consider trajectories, tendencies, and narrative arc as well. "
― Douglas Wilson
66 " The fact that you can't remember things doesn't mean that you haven't been shaped by them. "
67 " I don’t feel safe around anything when Jesus is not the Lord of it. Calvinism without Jesus is deadly; it’s fatalism, it’s simply Islam. We need Jesus. When the precious doctrines [of Calvinism] are used to perpetuate gloom, severity, introspection, accusations, morbidity, slander, gnat-stringing, and more, the soul is not safe. "
68 " The independence of art from worldview and worldview concerns is a myth. Every work of art is produced within a framework of worldview assumptions. "
69 " Your writing advances a particular view of the world. Pretending that it does't just confuses everybody, starting with you. "
70 " The brain is not a shoebox that 'gets full,' but rather a muscle that expands its capacity with increased use. The more you know, the more you can know. "
71 " Read constantly. Read the kind of stuff you wish you could write. Read until your brain creaks. "
72 " Stories in themselves are not automatically good; it has to be the right kind of story told by the right kind of person. "
73 " Propaganda (things to be propagated) is inescapable. It is not *whether* certain values will be propagated, but rather, *which* values will be propagated. "
74 " The fulfillment of the cultural mandate involves hard work, and men need to be hard in order to do the work. "
― Douglas Wilson , Reforming Marriage
75 " You do not create ex nihilo. You rearrange and recombine. You are the same old flour and eggs in search of a new recipe. "
76 " Whenever two unbelievers quarrel, the may both say some very insightful things about the unsightly habits of the other. The postmodernists are very good at pointing out the pretensions of the modernists. And the modernists are very good at pointing out the incoherence of the postmodernists. "
77 " Read the kind of stuff you wish you could write. "
78 " There are two basic approaches to life- one in which the world is a world of scarcity, given to us by the skinflint god, and the other in which the world is a world of endless possibilities, bestowed on us by a loving Father. "
79 " You have to have that rare combination of thick skin and a tender heart. Most writers get it backward and have a tender skin and a thick heart... Every critic, however ill-informed, represents a point of view which is likely not limited to just him... Sometimes you will disagree with your critic, but you can always gain from him. "
80 " Men are created to exercise dominion over the earth; they are fitted to be husbandman, tilling the earth; they are equipped to be saviors, delivering from evil; they are expected to grow up into wisdom, becoming sages; and they are designed to reflect the image and glory of God. Some of these following terms may seem somewhat cumbersome, but let’s call them lords, husbandmen, saviors, sages, and glory-bearers. "
― Douglas Wilson , Future Men: Raising Boys to Fight Giants