Quotes on God, eternal life and the culture we find ourselves in

“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” - Albert Einstein

“It is mostly features of this world from which we take our satisfactions. The love of family, the company of our friends, the feel of the wind on the face, the excitement of the printed page, the delights of color and form and sound; food, wine, sex. But there is that other life that only human beings experience, and in that life, and from that life, other pulsations are felt. The press upon us, in the Christian vision, one thing again and again, which is that God love us. The best way to put it is that God would give His life for us and, in Christ, did.” - William F Buckley

Tom Wolfe: No, I'm not a believer. I was raised as a Presbyterian, and when I was about thirteen or fourteen, I just kind of wandered off. It wasn't -- I had never had this moment when I said there is no God.

Rolling Stone: But as a nonbeliever, you still seem to be defending belief.

Tom Wolfe: Anyone who thinks that religion is bad for society is out of his mind. We are now beginning to see what happens when you don’t have it. People get depressed when they don’t have something to believe. I think the contemporary conception of the human mind has become more and more depressing. This is my problem with the atheists, people like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris. They’re saying that there is no ghost in the machine, that it’s all physical. And if it’s all physical, it’s going to obey certain laws. And the endpoint of the argument is that there is no free will, that you and I are machines that have had a certain genetic foundation, and as soon as we know enough about that, we’ll be able to predict what’ll happen when you meet me. We just need the information. That’s a very depressing thought.” - Rolling Stone interview with Tom Wolfe

“What seem our worst prayers may really be, in God's eyes, our best. Those, I mean, which are least supported by devotional feeling. For these may come from a deeper level than feeling. God sometimes seems to speak to us most intimately when he catches us, as it were, off our guard.”

“If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were precisely those who thought most of the next. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this one.” - C. S. Lewis

“To those in the church who still sit in judgment on the AIDS emergency, let me climb into the pulpit for just one moment. Whatever thoughts we have about God, who He is or even if God exists, most will agree that God has a special place for the poor. The poor are where God lives. God is in the slums, in the cardboard boxes where the poor play house. God is where the opportunity is lost and lives are shattered. God is with the mother who has infected her child with a virus that will take both their lives. God is under the rubble in the cries we hear during wartime. God, my friends, is with the poor and God is with us if we are with them.” - Bono at the 2007 NAACP Image Awards

Jack White of the White Stripes: “Oh yes, heavy duty—but not to the point of you know, speaking in tongues or anything. But it was in the air for sure. I appreciate it as well. I like looking at life through that at times. I wouldn’t consider myself sort of…I mean, I just like being in touch with God, I think. I think that’s sort of important. I think when you’re a creative person in any kind of art form, once you finally admit to yourself that you can’t create like God creates, it humbles you. And then you can be free to explore the beauty of that creativity. When you look at it with God in the picture as well it just sort of frees you up, I think.”

“ It is the soul that finds God to be everything that is so filled with His presence there is no place for self. So alone can the promised be fulfilled: 'The pride of men brought low; the Lord alone will be exalted that day (Isaiah 2:11)' ”

“ Humility is perfect quietness of heart. It is for me to have no trouble; never to be fretted or vexed or irritated or sore or disappointed. It is to expect nothing, to wonder at nothing that is done to me, to feel nothing done against me. It is to be at rest when nobody praises me and when I am blamed or despised. It is to have a blessed home in the Lord where I can go in and shut the door and kneel to my Father in secret and be at peace as in a deep sea of calmness when all around is trouble. It is the fruit of the Lord Jesus Christ’s redemptive work on Calvary’s cross, manifested in those of His own who are definitely subject to the Holy Spirit. ” - Humility by Andrew Murray

“In the evening of life we shall be judged on love, and not one of us is going to come off very well, and were it not for my absolute faith in the loving forgiveness of my Lord I could not call on him to come.”

“You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.”

“We can't take any credit for our talents. It's how we use them that counts.” - Madeleine L'Engle

“Oh, the glory of it all is He came here for the rescue of us all.
That we may live for the glory of it all
Oh, the glory of it all” from Remedy - David Crowder Band

“The noise in my head was deafening, and drinking was in my thoughts all the time. It shocked me to realize that here I was in a treatment center, a supposedly safe environment, and I was in serious danger. I was absolutely terrified, in complete despair. At that moment, almost of their own accord, my legs gave way and I fell to my knees. In the privacy of my room, I begged for help. I had no notion who I thought I was talking to, I just knew that I had come to the end of my tether, I had nothing left to fight with. Then I remembered what I had heard about surrender, something I thought I could never do, my pride just wouldn’t allow it, but I knew that on my own I wasn’t going to make it, so I asked for help, and, getting down on my knees, I surrendered. Within a few days I realized that something had happened for me. An atheist would probably say it was just a change of attitude, and to a certain extent that’s true, but there was much more to it than that. I had found a place to turn to, a place I’d always known was there but never really wanted, or needed, to believe in. From that day until this, I have never failed to pray in the morning, on my knees, asking for help, and at night, to express gratitude for my life and, most of all, for my sobriety. I choose to kneel because I feel I need to humble myself when I pray, and with my ego, this is the most I can do. If you are asking why I do all this, I will tell you…because it works, as simple as that. In all this time that I’ve been sober, I have never once seriously thought of taking a drink or a drug. I have no problem with religion, and I grew up with a strong curiosity about spiritual matters, but my searching took me away from church and community worship to the internal journey. Before my recovery began, I found my God in music and the arts, with writers like Hermann Hesse, and musicians like Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf and Little Walter. In some way, in some form, my God was always there, but now I have learned to talk to him.” - Eric Clapton on his 20 year sobriety in Clapton: The Autobiography (Quote provided by Steve Beard of Thunderstruck)

“[Some people are called to medicine; others are called to the priesthood. Still others, like Casey Sheehan, are called to put on a uniform, pick up a gun, and defend their country in times of war.] There is joy, ... in fulfilling a calling that fits who we are and, like the pillar of cloud and fire, goes ahead of our lives to lead us... Our gifts and destiny do not lie expressly in our parents' wishes, our boss's plans, our peer group's pressures, our generation's prospects, or our society's demands. Rather, we each need to know our own unique design, which is God's design for us.” - Os Guinness The Call

“What about the people who hear you talking about God and the devil and think, “He's crazy!”?That's the hazard, of course. You talk about God and the devil and you're crazy! If you don't believe in God and the devil, I wouldn't say you're crazy, but you're intellectually malnourished, because I defy anyone who doesn't believe that something created us to give an answer to how we got here.” - EW.com Interview with >Norman Mailer

“The noise in my head was deafening, and drinking was in my thoughts all the time. It shocked me to realize that here I was in a treatment center, a supposedly safe environment, and I was in serious danger. I was absolutely terrified, in complete despair. At that moment, almost of their own accord, my legs gave way and I fell to my knees. In the privacy of my room, I begged for help. I had no notion who I thought I was talking to, I just knew that I had come to the end of my tether, I had nothing left to fight with. Then I remembered what I had heard about surrender, something I thought I could never do, my pride just wouldn’t allow it, but I knew that on my own I wasn’t going to make it, so I asked for help, and, getting down on my knees, I surrendered. Within a few days I realized that something had happened for me. An atheist would probably say it was just a change of attitude, and to a certain extent that’s true, but there was much more to it than that. I had found a place to turn to, a place I’d always known was there but never really wanted, or needed, to believe in. From that day until this, I have never failed to pray in the morning, on my knees, asking for help, and at night, to express gratitude for my life and, most of all, for my sobriety. I choose to kneel because I feel I need to humble myself when I pray, and with my ego, this is the most I can do. If you are asking why I do all this, I will tell you…because it works, as simple as that. In all this time that I’ve been sober, I have never once seriously thought of taking a drink or a drug. I have no problem with religion, and I grew up with a strong curiosity about spiritual matters, but my searching took me away from church and community worship to the internal journey. Before my recovery began, I found my God in music and the arts, with writers like Hermann Hesse, and musicians like Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf and Little Walter. In some way, in some form, my God was always there, but now I have learned to talk to him.” - Eric Clapton on his 20 year sobriety in Clapton: The Autobiography (Quote provided by Steve Beard of Thunderstruck)

more quotes

____________________

Just to make it clear, we nor the Austin Stone endorse all of the ideas or quotes that are presented on this website, except, of course, the ones we've written ourselves. This is just point of clarification. This website exists to join a community of believers together and “to explore the collision between pop culture and the realms of faith, religion, and spirituality. Sometimes that is tidy, and orthodox. More often than not, however, it is not.” (Stolen from a better writer than myself.) Our intent is not to offend, but to merely inform.