Quotes 8 Sep 17

The world sees shallow and temporary happiness every day, but joy that endures suffering will be utterly foreign.- Desiring God‏ @desiringGod

Dr. D. James Kennedy warned against any weeping at his funeral.  Instead, he said “I want you to begin with the Doxology and end with the Hallelujah chorus, because I am not going to be there, and I am not going to be dead.  I will be more alive than I have ever been in my life.  I will be alive forever, in greater health and vitality and joy than ever, ever, I or anyone has known before.”

Every noble crown is, and on Earth will forever be, a crown of thorns.-Thomas Carlyle, Past and Present, Book III, Chapter VIII

I put off giving time to the quest for wisdom.  For "it is not the discovery but the mere search for wisdom which should be preferred even to the discovery of treasures and to ruling over nations and to the physical delights available to me at a nod." But I was an unhappy young man, wretched as at the beginning of my adolescence when I prayed you for chastity and said: "Grant me chastity and continence, but not yet." I was afraid you might hear my prayer quickly, and that you might too rapidly heal me of the disease of lust which I preferred to satisfy rather than suppress. - Augustine (354-430) _Confessions_ [397-401]; Book VIII, Number 7

“What is the effect of people coming into Europe in very large numbers who have not inherited the doubts and intuitions of Europeans? Nobody knows now, and nobody ever did. All we can be certain of is that it will have an effect. Putting tens of millions of people with their own sets of ideas and contradictions into a continent with its own set of ideas and contradictions is bound to have consequences. The presumption of those who believed in integration is that in time everybody who arrives will become like Europeans, a presumption made less likely by the fact that so many Europeans are unsure whether they want to be Europeans. A culture of self-doubt and self-distrust is uniquely unlikely to persuade others to adopt its stance. Meantime it is possible that many – at least – of the incomers will either hold fast to their own certainties or even, quite plausibly, attract Europeans in the generations to come with these certainties. It is also plausible that many of those who come will enjoy the lifestyle, will take part in the aspirations and the fruits of the economic uplift so long as it continues, and yet despise or disdain the culture into which they have come. They may use it – as President Erdogan memorably said of democracy – like a bus, and get off whenever it has taken them to their desired destination. “Douglas Murray, The Strange Death of Europe, p 212