Archive for the 'quotations' Category

wheel in the sky keeps on turnin’

Monday, February 23rd, 2009

Hard to argue with this, really:

If, robbed of two fond old enormities,
Our being had no onward auguries,
What then were this great love of ours to say
For launching other lives to voyage again
A little farther into time and pain,
A little faster in a futile chase
For a kingdom and a power and a Race
That would have still in sight
A manifest end of ashes and eternal night?
Is this the music of the toys we shake
So loud,—as if there might be no mistake
Somewhere in our indomitable will?
Are we no greater than the noise we make
Along one blind atomic pilgrimage
Whereon by crass chance billeted we go
Because our brains and bones and cartilage
Will have it so?
If this we say, then let us all be still
About our share in it, and live and die
More quietly thereby.

(E. A. Robinson, “The Man Against the Sky“)

…and, of course, for the title reference, take a Journey to the music video world.

operant conditioning

Friday, June 13th, 2008

All knowing is adversely affected by the fall, yet people can—under the right conditions—attain reasonable beliefs on the things that matter most.

(Doug Groothuis, “The Christian Worldview in Classical Philosophical Categories“)

True enough. But “the right conditions” remain critical, and open to interpretation in lieu of an eschatological realization: crucial, a crux not merely of interpretation.

worth wrestling with

Friday, May 9th, 2008

A portion of a prayer from one who influenced me deeply:

Give us that which, our heavenly Father, Wesley really understood, and Finney, the evangelist that most people know in this country and Whitefield and many of the others. A call for the individual to accept Christ as Savior and come under the shed blood of Christ and pass from death to life. A call for those of us who are Christians, oh God, to bow our hearts more completely and not let other things get in the way — to let the Holy Spirit have His place under the teaching of Scripture and within the circle of the teaching of Scripture, and then, Heavenly Father, to realize that everything belongs to the Lord Jesus. That He died not only to take our souls to heaven — but that our bodies will be raised one day from the dead.

(Francis Schaeffer, A Christian Manifesto)

hearts are trumps

Wednesday, February 6th, 2008

In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.
Jesus, John 16:33

laissez les bon temps roullez

Wednesday, February 6th, 2008

If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face–for ever.
(spoken by O’Brien; Orwell, 1984)

woman in chains

Monday, February 4th, 2008

from an extended discussion in quotations at my Baylor blog, a tiny snippet:

from our present via media—facilitation of divorce—can only result the era when the young lady in reduced circumstances will no longer turn governess but will be open to engagement as wife at a reasonable stipend. (Francis Thompson on Shelley)

(post title refers to a Tears For Fears song. you know if you know)

there’s something happenning here

Saturday, February 2nd, 2008

pgepps thinking …you’d have to think, wouldn’t you?

What’s in your mind, my dove, my coney;
Do thoughts grow like feathers, the dead end of life;
Is it making of love or counting of money,
Or raid on the jewels, the plans of a thief?
(W. H. Auden, November 1930)

(reading the rest of the poem would render the question academic.)
(of course, if you read the rest of the poem, you probably are. academic.)