3
" Yet man dies not whilst the world, at once his mother and his monument, remains. His name is lost, indeed, but the breath he breathed still stirs the pine-tops on the mountains, the sound of the words he spoke yet echoes on through space; the thoughts his brain gave birth to we have inherited to-day; his passions are our cause of life; the joys and sorrows that he knew are our familiar friends--the end from which he fled aghast will surely overtake us also!
Truly the universe is full of ghosts, not sheeted churchyard spectres, but the inextinguishable elements of individual life, which having once been, can never die, though they blend and change, and change again for ever. "
― H. Rider Haggard , King Solomon's Mines (Allan Quatermain, #1)
4
" I did not believe that a Cause which stood for a beautiful ideal, for anarchism, for release and freedom from convention and prejudice, should demand the denial of life and joy. I insisted that our Cause could not expect me to become a nun and that the movement would not be turned into a cloister. If it meant that, I did not want it. " I want freedom, the right to self-expression, everybody's right to beautiful, radiant things." Anarchism meant that to me, and I would live it in spite of the whole world — prisons, persecution, everything. Yes, even in spite of the condemnation of my own closest comrades I would live my beautiful ideal. "
7
" The first help to prayer is our only Mediator and Advocate, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, 1 John 2:2. He is pleading our cause before God, when we are hardly able to express what we want; who is therefore called the Word of the Father, because God, by him, has discovered his will to us; as he is also called 'the Mediator,' because he solicits our cause before God. When Moses complained that he was of slow speech, and a slow tongue, that so he might avoid carrying the commanded message to Pharaoh, God tells him, 'Aaron thy brother can speak well, he shall be to thee instead of a mouth.' Se we also, when we shall pray, are dull, and slow of speech, and therefore must fly to Christ, our heavenly Aaron, who is to us instead of a mouth. Therefore Christ commands us to pray in his name, who is our eternal High-priest, 'having an everlasting priesthood,' (Heb. 7:24,) 'interceding for us,' (Rom. 8:34,) 'in whom we have boldness,' and access with confidence by the faith of him,' Eph. 3:12. "
― Johann Arndt , Johann Arndt: True Christianity
8
" If we get our very identity, our sense of worth, from our political position, then politics is not really about, it is about US. Through our cause we are getting a self, our worth. That means we MUST despise and demonize the opposition. If we get our identity from our ethnicity or socioeconomic status, then we HAVE to feel superior to those of other classes and races. If you are profoundly proud of being an open-minded, tolerant soul, you will be extremely indignant toward people you think are bigots. If you are a very moral person, you will feel superior to people you think are licentious. And so on. "
― Timothy J. Keller , The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism
9
" My dear Sir.
Yours of the 13th. is just received. My engagements are such that I can not, at any very early day, visit Rock-Island, to deliver a lecture, or for any other object.
As to the other matter you kindly mention, I must, in candor, say I do not think myself fit for the Presidency. I certainly am flattered, and gratified, that some partial friends think of me in that connection; but I really think it best for our cause that no concerted effort, such as you suggest, should be made.
Let this be considered confidential. Yours very truly,
{Abraham Lincoln} "
― Abraham Lincoln , Speeches and Writings 1859–1865