besmirch QUOTES

1 " Fine sermons have been preached on the text that those who have should share with those who
have not, but he who would act out this principle is speedily informed that these beautiful sentiments
are all very well in poetry, but not in practice. “To lie is to degrade and besmirch oneself,” we say, and
yet all civilized life becomes one huge lie. We accustom ourselves and our children to hypocrisy, to the
practice of a double-faced morality. And since the brain is ill at ease among lies, we cheat ourselves
with sophistry. Hypocrisy and sophistry become the second nature of the civilized man.
But a society cannot live thus; it must return to truth or cease to exist. "

― Pyotr Kropotkin , The Conquest of Bread

2 " Is the invisible presence of the Christian fellowship a reality and a help to the individual? Is the Word of God close to him as a comfort and a strength? Or does he misuse his aloneness contrary to the fellowship, the Word, and the prayer? The individual must realize that his hours of aloneness react upon the community. In his solitude he can sunder and besmirch the fellowship, or he can strengthen and hallow it. Every act of self-control of the Christian is also a service to the fellowship. One who returns to the Christian family fellowship after fighting the battle of the day brings with him the blessing of his aloneness, but he himself receives anew the blessing of the fellowship. Blessed is he who is alone in the strength of the fellowship and blessed is he who keeps the fellowship in the strength of aloneness. But the strength of aloneness and the strength of the fellowship is solely the strength of the Word of God, which is addressed to the individual in the fellowship. "

― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

3 " A lady sent me an email recently advising me to change my environment. I guess she read through the lines of my writing and I had adequately painted a portrait of my experiences for her to form a conclusion that melancholia and fatalistic views of my protagonist reveals the depth or layers of my own consciousness. I haven't experienced much of life at twenty five but I've noticed enough, more than most people do at my age. I won't lie that sometimes it leaves me menacingly depressed.

I only represent myself. I am in no competition with anyone. I often muse that if people were half concerned about wars and crimes, corruption in high places and poverty with the heavy regard they place upon other's lives then we would have a better world. Just imagine if the average man on the road heckled politicians the way they are often inclined to insult a fat woman.

I have a Ton load of bad experiences but I have not allowed them to deter me, people will think about them at some high point in my life and try to use it to besmirch whatever glory I may attain. I understand that too, they can use it for whatever barometer on their lives they see fit but as for me, I used my crash falls as stairwells to greatness.

Sometimes I feel alone because I am youthful and curious about life and people judge me for it and oftentimes it leaves me feeling lonely and asocial. You see the deep thinker has to be careful, the shallow minded will take one look and paint him as madness. "

― Crystal Evans

4 " We are marching in a compact group along a precipitous and difficult path, firmly holding each other by the hand. We are surrounded on all sides by enemies, and we have to advance almost constantly under their fire. We have combined, by a freely adopted decision, for the purpose of fighting the enemy, and not of retreating into the neighbouring marsh, the inhabitants of which, from the very outset, have reproached us with having separated ourselves into an exclusive group and with having chosen the path of struggle instead of the path of conciliation. And now some among us begin to cry out: Let us go into the marsh! And when we begin to shame them, they retort: What backward people you are! Are you not ashamed to deny us the liberty to invite you to take a better road! Oh, yes, gentlemen! You are free not only to invite us, but to go yourselves wherever you will, even into the marsh. In fact, we think that the marsh is your proper place, and we are prepared to render you every assistance to get there. Only let go of our hands, don't clutch at us and don't besmirch the grand word freedom, for we too are " free" to go where we please, free to fight not only against the marsh, but also against those who are turning towards the marsh! "