In solitude the mind gains strength, and learns to lean upon herself; in the world it seeks or accepts of a few treacherous supports--the feigned compassion of one, the flattery of a second, the civilities of a third, the friendship of a fourth--they all deceive, and bring the mind back to retirement, reflection, and books.
If you believe the noises of the world, rather than the silences of your soul, you will be lost.
Wherever I am, the world comes after me. It offers me its busyness. It does not believe that I do not want it. Now I understand why the old poets of China went so far and high into the mountains, then crept into the pale mist.
The great triad of enemies for Christian growth contain the world, the flesh, and the devil.
Sweet Love of youth, forgive, if I forget thee, While the world's tide is bearing me along; Sterner desires and darker hopes beset me, Hopes which obscure, but cannot do thee wrong.
What is meant here is that man should not become immersed in loving the world which will make him forget the responsibilities that Allah had ordered him to hold, but he has to look at the world in its reality, in which it represents a place for obeying Allah.
Turn in upon yourselves, get into your closets, and now resolve to dwell there. You have been strangers to this work too long; you have kept other vineyards too long; you have trifled about the borders of religion too long. Will you now resolve to look better to your hearts? Will you hate and come out of the crowds of business and clamors of the world and retire yourselves more than you have done? Oh, that this day you would resolve upon it!
Let us make our hearts as big as an ocean, to go beyond all the trifles of the world and see it only as a picture. We can then enjoy the world without being in any way affected by it.
Violent passions are formed in solitude. In the busy world no object has time to make a deep impression.
I throw myself down in my chamber, and I call in, and invite God, and his Angels thither, and when they are there, I neglect God and his Angels, for the noise of a fly, for the rattling of a coach, for the whining of a door.
Fight for us, O God, that we not drift numb and blind and foolish into vain and empty excitements. Life is too short, too precious, too painful to waste on worldly bubbles that burst. Heaven is too great, hell is too horrible, eternity is too long that we should putter around on the porch of eternity.
all should attend to the essence of religion, and not act as the world was now taught and trained to do; that is, to overlook the substance and essence of religion, and devote their talents, time, and money, to that which is far worse than its shadow, sectarianism;
Our joy ends where love of the world begins.
I neglect God and his angles for the noise of a fly, for the rattling of a coach, for the whining of a door.
I plainly felt that, had God given me such a retirement with the companion I desired, I should have forgotten the work for which I was born and have set up my rest in this world.
If you wait until you got time to write a novel, or time to write a story, or time to read the hundred thousands of books you should have already read - if you wait for the time, you will never do it. ‘Cause there ain’t no time; world don’t want you to do that. World wants you to go to the zoo and eat cotton candy, preferably seven days a week.
We Christians must simplify our lives or lose untold treasures on earth and in eternity.
A house must be built on solid foundations if it is to last. The same principle applies to man, otherwise he too will sink back into the soft ground and becomes swallowed up by the world of illusion.
When from our better selves we have too long been parted by the hurrying world, and droop. Sick of its business, of its pleasures tired, how gracious, how benign is solitude.
If you don't feel strong desires for the manifestation of the glory of God, it is not because you have drunk deeply and are satisfied. It is because you have nibbled so long at the table of the world. Your soul is stuffed with small things, and there is no room for the great.
No, I'm not religious, I'm sorry to say. But I was once and shall be again. There is no time now to be religious." "No time. Does it need time to be religious?" "Oh, yes. To be religious you must have time and, even more, independence of time. You can't be religious in earnest and at the same time live in actual things and still take them seriously, time and money and the Odéon Bar and all that.
A good Cuban cigar closes the doors to the vulgarities of the world.
Finally he said that if men drink the blood of God yet they do not understand the seriousness of what they do. He said that men wish to be serious but they do not understand how to be so. Between their acts and their ceremonies lies the world and in this world the storms blow and the trees twist in the wind and all the animals that God has made go to and fro yet this world men do not see. They see the acts of their own hands or they see that which they name and call out to one another but the world between is invisible to them
I'm all over the place, up and down, scattered, withdrawing, trying to find some elusive sense of serenity." The world can't give that serenity. The world can't give us peace. We can only find it in our hearts." I hate that." I know. But the good news is that by the same token, the world can't take it away.
When we hear people talk of riches, honors and amusements of the world, let us remember that all things have an end, and let us then say: My God, I wish for You alone and nothing more.
