Yes, now you know. Now you know! That’s what it was to be alive. To move about in a cloud of ignorance; to go up and down trampling on the feelings of those…of those about you. To spend and waste time as though you had a million years. To be always at the mercy of one self-centered passion, or another. Now you know — that’s the happy existence you wanted to go back to. Ignorance and blindness. - Thornton Wilder

… at best, each of us is but a breath” – Psalm 39:5

So teach us to number our days – Let us deeply consider our own frailty, and the shortness and uncertainty of life, that we may live for eternity, acquaint ourselves with thee and be at peace; that we may die in thy favor and live and reign with thee eternally. –  Clarke’s commentary on Psalm 90:12

There are people who, on meeting a successful rival, no matter in what, are at once disposed to turn their backs on everything good in him, and to see only what is bad. There are people, on the other hand, who desire above all to find in that lucky rival the qualities by which he has outstripped them, and seek with a throbbing ache at heart only what is good.

- Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

All the greatest people ever lived have been telling us that for five thousand years and yet you’d be surprised how people are always losing hold of it. There’s something way down deep that’s eternal about every human being.

I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise does not merely express but completes the enjoyment. It’s not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling each other how beautiful they are. The delight in one another isn’t complete unless it’s expressed.

- C.S. Lewis

Every now and then when you’re on stage, you can hear the best sound that a player can hear.  It is a sound you can’t get in movies or in television.  It is the sound of a wonderful, deep silence that means you’ve hit them where they live.

- Shelley Winters

1. Never get less than 12 hours sleep
2. Never play cards with a guy whose got the same first name as a city, and
3. Never go near a lady whose got a tattoo of a dagger on her body.

You stick with that, and everything else is cream cheese.”

–Coach Bobby Finstock, Teen Wolf

Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy’s will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken and still obeys.

- C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

But I’m here to say to you this morning that some things are right and some things are wrong.  Eternally so, absolutely so.  It’s wrong to hate.  It always has been wrong and it always will be wrong.  It’s wrong in America, it’s wrong in Germany, it’s wrong in Russia, it’s wrong in China.  It was wrong in 2000 B.C., and it’s wrong in 1954 A.D.  It always has been wrong, (That’s right!) and it always will be wrong. (That’s right!)  It’s wrong to throw our lives away in riotous living.  No matter if everybody in Detroit is doing it, it’s wrong.  It always will be wrong, and it always has been wrong.  It’s wrong in every age, and it’s wrong in every nation.  Some things are right, and some things are wrong, no matter if everybody is doing the contrary.  Some things in this universe are absolute.  The God of the universe has made it so. And so long as we adopt this relative attitude toward right and wrong, we’re revolting against the very laws of God himself.

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Except that I’m just not really all that sure that God is all that concerned about being entertained. I’m not sure except that’s just a human thing. Sometimes you try to impress God with all the right words and I just don’t think it’s an easy thing to impress God Almighty. If you know what I mean. And here is the thing that I think we often forget – is that we don’t have to impress Him. Cause He’s already knocked out about you. He already loves you more than you can imagine.

I remember reading a thing that Picasso once said. I like to read what famous artists have to say because I’m barely able to look a their paintings without going into a coma trying to figure out what it’s about. But he said this one thing that I really did like. He said that good taste was the enemy of great art. Which I think is very, very true. Good taste has all to do with being cultured and being refined. If art has to do with anything, it has to do with being human. And one of the reasons I love the Bible is because the humans in the Bible are not very refined. They’re pretty goofy if you want to know the whole truth about it.

I remember when I was a kid and I was one of those typical depressed adolescent types. I wrote poetry and stuff. That’s how morose I was as a kid. People would go around saying, “Cheer up man because God Loves you!” I would always say, “Big deal! God loves everybody. That don’t make me special. That just proves that God ain’t got no taste.” And I don’t think He does. Thank God. Cause God takes the junk of our lives and He makes the greatest art in the world out of it. And if He was cultured – if He was as civilized as most Christian people wish He was – He would be useless to Christianity.

But God is a wild man. And, I hope that in the course of your life you encounter Him. But let me warn you, you need to hang on for dear life. Or, let go for dear life. Maybe is better.

- Rich Mullins

It is said of God that no one can behold his face and live. I always thought this meant that no one could see his splendor and live. A friend said perhaps it means that no one could see his sorrow and live. Or perhaps his sorrow is his splendor.

– Nicholas Wolterstorff