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121 " But what a feeling can come over a man just from seeing the things he believes in and hopes for symbolized in the concrete form of a man. In something that gives a focus to all the other things he knows to be real. Something that makes unseen things manifest and allows him to come to his hopes and dreams through his outer eye and through the touch and feel of his natural hand. "
― Ralph Ellison , Juneteenth
122 " To have faith is to be sure of the things we hope for, to be certain of the things we cannot see. "
123 " I mean that the reason God seems to act in ways that make no sense to us is that our perceptions are wrong. Our expectations are subtly twisted. We long for things that harm us and run from the things that grow and heal us. We think good is bad and bad is good. God acts rightly, but to us, it seems confusing. Or sometimes plain wrong. "
― Tessa Afshar , Pearl in the Sand
124 " It takes a lot of strength to hold onto and care for the things we love, so why is it that god seems to have made humans unable to conjure up that degree of power and love? "
― Ai Yazawa
125 " ... one flaw throws the loveliness of [everything else] into focus. I remember reading that Shakers deliberately introduced a mistake into the things they made, to show that man shouldn't aspire to the perfection of God. Flawed can be more perfect than perfection. "
― Gretchen Rubin , The Happiness Project: Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun
126 " If that were God's plan, it's a bad bargain; I don't want to have to deal with a God like that...My sense is God and I came to an accommodation with each other a couple of decades ago, where he's gotten used to the things that I'm not capable of and I've come to terms with things he's not capable of...and we care very much about each other. "
― Harold S. Kushner
127 " One of my greatest difficulties in consenting to think of religion was that I thought I should have to give up my beautiful thoughts and my love for the things God has made. But I find that the happiness springing from all things not in themselves sinful is much increased by religion. God is the God of the Beautiful—Religion is the love of the Beautiful, and Heaven is the Home of the Beautiful—-Nature is tenfold brighter in the Sun of Righteousness, and my love of Nature is more intense since I became a Christian—-if indeed I am one. God has not given me such thoughts and forbidden me to enjoy them. "
― George MacDonald
128 " If the gods have determined about me and about the things which must happen to me, they have determined well, for it is not easy even to imagine a deity without forethought; and as to doing me harm, why should they have any desire towards that? For what advantage would result to them from this or to the whole, which is the special object of their providence? But if they have not determined about me individually, they have certainly determined about the whole at least, and the things which happen by way of sequence in this general arrangement I ought to accept with pleasure and to be content with them. "
― Marcus Aurelius , Meditations
129 " This was another of our fears: that Life wouldn't turn out to be like Literature. Look at our parents--were they the stuff of Literature? At best, they might aspire to the condition of onlookers and bystanders, part of a social backdrop against which real, true, important things could happen. Like what? The things Literature was about: Love, sex, morality, friendship, happiness, suffering, betrayal, adultery, good and evil, heroes and villains, guilt and innocence, ambition, power, justice, revolution, war, fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, the individual against society, success and failure, murder, suicide, death, God. "
― Julian Barnes , The Sense of an Ending
130 " Isn’t that the way God works? She’d thought. He takes the things in our lives that are ugly, disgusting, and downright wicked, and transforms them into something magnificent. "
― J.E.B. Spredemann , An Unforgivable Secret (Amish Secrets #1)
131 " The truest of all truths is this: You are a child of God. Out of more than six billion people on earth now, He knows your name, what you fear and what you revere. He cares about the things you care about. He wants your happiness and success, and will reach to the farthest corner of the universe to see that you obtain your noblest dreams. "
― Toni Sorenson
132 " In the end idealism annoyed Bouvard. ‘I don’t want any more of it: the famous cogito is a bore. The ideas of things are taken for the things themselves. What we barely understand is explained by means of words that we do not understand at all! Substance, extension, force, matter and soul, are all so many abstractions, figments of the imagination. As for God, it is impossible to know how he is, or even if he is! Once he was the cause of wind, thunder, revolutions. Now he is getting smaller. Besides, I don’t see what use he is. "
― Gustave Flaubert , Bouvard and Pecuchet
133 " Pray each morning and each night.Talk to God and be polite.Tell Him what you're grateful for.Leave your troubles at His door.Share your wishes, needs, and hopes.Ask God how to bravely cope.Tell Him all you learned today.Say the things you need to say.Beg forgiveness for your sins.Pray to live with Him again.Speak with earnest heart and soul.He will listen. This I know.For prayer is hope put to the test.And hope is faith in what is best.Faith is power to do great things.Thus, prayer is faith's enabling wings. "
― Richelle E. Goodrich , Making Wishes: Quotes, Thoughts, & a Little Poetry for Every Day of the Year
134 " Do we always do the things that God would take pleasure, or that we do things we think God would take pleasure. "
135 " Ethics are the things that say, 'Don’t stick your finger in the socket.' The world says, 'It’s okay because we’ve shut off the electricity.' And at the point that we’ve chosen to listen to the world and ignore our ethics, we say, 'I’m having a really hard time getting back up. "
― Craig D. Lounsbrough
136 " He could breathe more freely in a lighter air. He was responsible only to himself for the things he did. Freedom! He was his own master at last. From old habit, unconsciously he thanked God that he no longer believed in Him. "
― W. Somerset Maugham , Of Human Bondage
137 " When you live for the purpose of making a difference for the people, for society, for the things that are beyond you, then significance will not be able to elude you. "
138 " Now I understand that one of the important reasons for going to college and getting an education is to learn that the things you've believed in all your life aren't true, and that nothing is what it appears to be. "
― Daniel Keyes , Flowers for Algernon
139 " When you've learned to laugh at the things that should be laughed at, and not to laugh at those that shouldn't, you've got wisdom and understanding. "
― L.M. Montgomery , Anne of the Island (Anne of Green Gables, #3)
140 " We must not think of the things we could do with, but only of the things that we can't do without. "
― Jerome K. Jerome , Three Men in a Boat (Three Men, #1)