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1 " The Lord commands us to do good unto all men without exception, though the majority are very undeserving when judged according to their own merits... [The Scripture] teaches us that we must not think of man's real value, but only of his creation in the image of God to which we owe all possible honor and love. "
― John Calvin , A Little Book on the Christian Life
2 " We are spiritual children of God the Father. We preach it. We sing it. But do we really understand it? Sometimes it’s easy to tell others they are loved, but not so easy to believe it of ourselves — not because we don’t think God loves His children, but because we may feel undeserving of His love. The adversary loves to remind us who we are not. Not pretty. Not smart. Not strong. But God would not have sacrificed His Son to save us if we aren’t worth saving. "
― Toni Sorenson ,
3 " Feeling undeserving is never compatible with the ability to attract or create wealth. "
4 " What I am trying to tell you,” Trinka said softly, looking back at him, “is that there are good ways to live, and bad ones. This is not a matter of opinion; it is objective truth. The Empire fights the Wilders because we need their land; that’s true. But there are other reasons. We fight them because they are unworthy. They are not fit to share this world – this divine gift – with folk who do not murder children. With people who do not rape women, or make slaves of the weak. The Wilders are undeserving of the gift of life, of divine choice. They are not fit to be called Children of Bræa. Their way of life is a blight upon the earth. They may look like men, but they live, and behave, like beasts.“If they were able to learn to live like civilized folk,” she sighed, “then we would make it our business to teach them; indeed, I would account it our duty to bring them into the light. We have tried. It has been more than a century since we first began settling the frontiers beyond the mountains, and in the three-score years since Duncala, we have tried many times to bring them the gift of civilization. But if they will not learn to act like civilized men, then civilized men are not obliged to tolerate them. The whole of Bræa’s creation, her divine intent, and her gift of choice to all of us – the gift of choice that grants us the possibility, and therefore the obligation, of bettering ourselves! – cries out against tolerating what by any reasoned definition is utter, bestial depravity. “We are Bræa’s heirs, the inheritors of her divine design. We are not obliged to endure depravity,” she said gravely. “We are obliged to redeem it, if we can; but if we cannot, then our obligation – to ourselves, our posterity, and the Holy Mother’s design – is to end it.” She cocked her head. “In this wise, it might help to think of the Wilders as little different from the hordes of Bardan, whose legacy of death and devastation ended the ancient world, and plunged all into darkness for twice a thousand years.” Her fist clenched involuntarily. “We will not suffer the darkness again, Esuric Mason. My brothers...my former comrades, I mean...they will not allow it.” She looked down at her hands. For a wonder, they were steady. “I will not allow it,” she whispered.- The Wizard's Eye (Hallow's Heart, Book II; Forthcoming) "
5 " If we don't embrace them, then we are as undeserving of life as the caveman who freezes to death because he's afraid to start a fire. "
― Dan Brown , Inferno (Robert Langdon, #4)
6 " Charity is the power of defending that which we know to be indefensible. Hope is the power of being cheerful in circumstances which we know to be desperate. It is true that there is a state of hope which belongs to bright prospects and the morning; but that is not the virtue of hope. The virtue of hope exists only in earthquake and eclipse. It is true that there is a thing crudely called charity, which means charity to the deserving poor; but charity to the deserving is not charity at all, but justice. It is the undeserving who require it, and the ideal either does not exist at all, or exists wholly for them. For practical purposes it is at the hopeless moment that we require the hopeful man, and the virtue either does not exist at all, or begins to exist at that moment. Exactly at the instant when hope ceases to be reasonable it begins to be useful. "
― G.K. Chesterton , Heretics
7 " The Gospel takes away our right forever, to discriminate between the deserving and the undeserving poor. "
― Dorothy Day
8 " Nature had squandered an unreasonable quantity of male beauty on this undeserving creature. "
― Lisa Kleypas , Devil in Winter (Wallflowers, #3)
9 " You mistake us for abstaining your kind from undeserving happiness when all we do is to fight for our cause. We are soldiers, not rebels. "
10 " In the silence punctuated only by their footsteps, both men thought not of themselves but of a Man who once made a long,lonely march up a hill, who in the world's worst hour did the most courageous thing ever done.At the end of His climb,He spread out His arms and permitted guilty men to drive nails into His hands and feet. He endured untold agony to give undeserving men- like Mike Hollis, Derrick Freeman, Nathan Hayes, and Adam Mitchell- a second chance.To most people none of this - not what these men were doing now, nor what He did two thousand years ago-made sense.From the outside, grace and truth,honor and courage,seldom do. "
― Randy Alcorn
11 " Our family had waited so long for this moment and had spent so many years being told we were undeserving of this basic right. But for me there was a sense of validation because after eighteen years, I was finally able to stand with my two dads when they legally wed. "
12 " Don't make excuses for your mistakes.Don't try to please your enemies.Don't run from your responsibilities.Don't force your opinions on others.Don't complain about things you can change.Don't compare yourself to anyone.Don't let undeserving people into your life. "
―
13 " She explained that many people, but especially women, feel fraudulent when they are praised for their accomplishments. Instead of feeling worthy of recognition, they feel undeserving and guilty, as if a mistake has been made. Despite being high achievers, even experts in their fields, women can't seem to shake the sense that it is only a matter of time until they are found out for who they really are- impostors with limited skills or abilities. "
― Sheryl Sandberg , Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead
14 " Someday, the people we know, are acquainted to become the people we knew. They leave. They leave to pursue the opportunities laid down in their paths and they leave on account of misunderstandings.Their absence causes a vacuum, a space, an incompleteness which we believe no one can fill. But someday, someone eventually does and that someone rekindles our hopes for companionship, until the circle continues and is ultimately intervened by the permanence of death.The future is alarming, as atrocious as the past. And the friendship, the love, the memories either remain in our hearts cherished or are forgotten like an undeserving dream.Everything eventually fades away, either for the better or worse.Someday, the people we know, are acquainted to become the people we knew.But then again, that someday is not today and so we must be a little more appreciative, for the moment, for the times, for the present because someday everything is going to change. "
15 " In the shadow of my hurt, forgiveness feel like a decision to reward my enemy. But in the shadow of the cross, forgiveness is merely a gift from one undeserving soul to another. "
― Andy Stanley , It Came from Within!: The Shocking Truth of What Lurks in the Heart
16 " Be kind to people whether they deserve your kindness or not. If your kindness reaches the deserving good for you if your kindness reaches the undeserving take joy in your compassion. "
17 " In our hearts... there must abide some pity for those people who have always felt themselves to be separate from even their most familiar surroundings, those people who either are foreigners or who suffer a singular point of view that makes them feel as if they’re foreigners - even in their native lands. In our hearts... there also abides a certain suspicion that such people need to feel set apart from their society. But people who initiate loneliness are no less lonely than those who are suddenly surprised by loneliness, nor are they undeserving of our pity. "
― John Irving , A Son of the Circus
18 " We were perfectly placed, perfectly disposed to one another. Our pieces fit so well together, not in the way that puzzle pieces are carved to click, but in a clumsier, more accidental way; we were a city skyline – unplanned architectural mastery. Designed by the heavens, and you called me your angel – even when I was undeserving of that accolade. You’d call yourself the devil and I’d feel betrayed. Because for me, we were the same, either two sinners or two saints. "
19 " No one thought the poor more undeserving than the poor themselves. "
― Matthew Desmond , Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
20 " Evictions were deserved, understood to be the outcome of individual failure. They “helped get rid of the riffraff,” some said. No one thought the poor more undeserving than the poor themselves.In years past, renters opposed landlords and saw themselves as a “class” with shared interests and a unified purpose. During the early twentieth century, tenants organized against evictions and unsanitary conditions. When landlords raised rents too often or too steeply, tenants went so far as to stage rent strikes. Strikers joined together to withhold rent and form picket lines, risking eviction, arrest, and beatings by hired thugs. They were not an especially radical bunch, these strikers. Most were ordinary mothers and fathers who believed landlords were entitled to modest rent increases and fair profits, but not “price gouging.” In New York City, the great rent wars of the Roaring Twenties forced a state legislature to impose rent controls that remain the country’s strongest to this day.Petitions, picket lines, civil disobedience—this kind of political mobilization required a certain shift in vision. "