Mr. SponsorPants

5 Quotes on Kindness

 

 

Kindness is loving people more than they deserve.

 -- Joseph Joubert

Kindness can become its own motive. We are made kind by being kind.

 -- Eric Hoffer

Remember there's no such thing as a small act of kindness. Every act creates a ripple with no logical end.

 -- Scott Adams

 

Kindness is in our power, even when fondness is not.

 -- Samuel Johnson

 

I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.

 -- Tennessee Williams 

5 Quotes on Anger

 

 

Anger, if not restrained, is frequently more hurtful to us than the injury that provokes it.

 -- Lucius Annaeus Seneca

 

He who angers you conquers you.

 -- Elizabeth Kenny

 

Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret.

 -- Ambrose Bierce

 

Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be.

 -- Thomas Kempis

 

If a small thing has the power to make you angry, does that not indicate something about your size?

 -- Sydney J. Harris

 

 

5 Quotes on Gratitude

 

 

At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.

-- Albert Schweitzer

 

Gratitude bestows reverence, allowing us to encounter everyday epiphanies, those transcendent moments of awe that change forever how we experience life and the world.

-- John Milton

 

Gratitude is when memory is stored in the heart and not in the mind.

-- Lionel Hampton

 

Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend.

-- Melody Beattie

 

Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace, and gratitude.

-- Denis Waitley

5 Quotes on Humility

 

 

Humility is nothing else but a right judgement of ourselves.

-- William Law

 

Pride makes us artificial and humility makes us real.

-- Thomas Merton

 

There is something in humility which strangely exalts the heart.

-- Saint Augustine

 

True humility is contentment.

-- Henri Frederic Amiel

 

Life is a long lesson in humility.

-- James M. Barrie

 

5 Quotes on Atheism

 

 

An atheist may be simply one whose faith and love are concentrated on the impersonal aspects of God.

--Simone Weil

 

 

If there is a God, He is infinitely incomprehensible, since, having, neither parts nor limits, He has no affinity to us. We are then incapable of knowing either what He is or if He is. [So] you must wager. Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is. Let us estimate these two chances. If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager then without hesitation that he is.

-- Blaise Pascal

I have always considered "Pascal's Wager" a questionable bet to place. Any God worth "believing in" would surely prefer an honest agnostic to a calculating hypocrite.

-- Alan Dershowitz

 

 

And if there were a God, I think it very unlikely that He would have such an uneasy vanity as to be offended by those who doubt His existence.

--Bertrand Russell

 

 

Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear.

-- Thomas Jefferson

 

5 Quotes on Forgiveness

 

 

Anger makes you smaller, while forgiveness forces you to grow beyond what you were.

-- Cherie Carter-Scott

 

Forgiveness is me giving up my right to hurt you for hurting me.

-- Anonymous

 

"Not to forgive is to be imprisoned by the past, by old grievances that do not permit life to proceed with new business. Not to forgive is to yield oneself to another's control... to be locked into a sequence of act and response, of outrage and revenge, tit for tat, escalating always. The present is endlessly overwhelmed and devoured by the past. Forgiveness frees the forgiver. It extracts the forgiver from someone else's nightmare."

-- Lance Morrow

 

To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover the prisoner was you.

-- Unknown

 

When I forgive I don't excuse evil, or tolerate abuse.  I don't say 'oh, that's ok, it doesn't matter now' in a weak attempt to minimize and forget rather than admit and confront the truth.  I don't pretend there was never any pain.  I look at the wrong and call it what it was, and let however I feel be however I feel, without judgement.  And then, when I'm ready -- though I never really think I'm ever ready -- I reach for compassion; I consider what sickness was at work in the wrong-doer, what harms and evil they suffered, what ignorance they labored under and consider how those things drove them -- just as similar things have driven me.  That is the beginning of my ability to truly forgive.  It happens in stages; sloppily and organically and at its own pace and also, ultimately, with God's help and in God's time.

-- Mr. SponsorPants

5 Quotes on Faith

Over the past nine months or so each of these thoughts have been a bit of a nightlight for me; something softly glowing in the dark -- a small illumination which gave either comfort or a little guidance.

 

Faith which does not doubt is dead faith.

—Miguel de Unamuno

 

Doubt isn't the opposite of faith; it is an element of faith.

--Paul Tillich

 

For many of us the great danger is not that we will renounce our faith. It is that we will become so distracted and rushed and preoccupied that we will settle for a mediocre version of it.

--John Ortberg

 

We turn to God for help when our foundations are shaking only to learn that it is God shaking them.

--Charles West

 

Faith is the refusal to panic.

--David Martyn Lloyd-Jones