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Quote by Zadie Smith

“I am a citizen as well as an individual soul and one of the things citizenship teaches us, over the long stretch, is that there is no perfectibility in human affairs… In this world there is only incremental progress… It might look small to those with apocalyptic perspectives, but to she who not so long ago could not vote, or drink from the same water fountain as her fellow citizens, or marry the person she chose, or live in a certain neighborhood, such incremental change feels enormous… We will never be perfect: that is our limitation. But we can have, and have had, moments in which we can take genuine pride… Progress is never permanent, will always be threatened, must be redoubled, restated and reimagined if it is to survive.”

Quote by Zadie Smith

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Zadie Smith
Zadie Smith

Zadie Smith is a British novelist known for her distinctive literary style and profound social insights. Her works cover a range of themes including race, class, gender, and identity, and have been widely appreciated by readers. more

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“That is why you must above all lovingly study the holy scriptures, why your soul must be illuminated by divine utterances, why the dark shadows of the devil have to be dispersed by the flash of God’s word; for the devil is quick to flee from the soul which is illuminated by divine speech, which is always occupied with heavenly thoughts, in which God’s word, whose force the evil spirit is unable to endure, is constantly present. For that reason the blessed apostle compared it to a sword when listing the arms for use in the war of the spirit (Eph.6.17). It is perfectly safe, however, for the mind to become accustomed to differentiating between one thought and another - always subject, of course, to careful and watchful control - and, at the first stirring of the mind, either to approving or to disapproving of what it is thinking, so that it either nourishes good thoughts or immediately destroys bad ones. In this lie the source of good and the origin of sin, and thought is the beginning of every great offense in the heart, painting every single deed on the tablet of the heart, as it were, before doing it; for every deed and every word, whichever it may be, is laid out for inspection in advance and its future is decided by thoughtful consideration. You can see what a brief moment sometimes separates a man’s thinking each thought and his putting that thought into action, nor is anything at all done by the tongue or the hand or other limbs, unless thoughts have previously dictated it; hence the Lord also says in the gospel: Out of the heart of man come evil thoughts, adultery, fornication, murder, theft, false witness, greed, evil, trickery, unchastity, the evil eye, blasphemy, pride, folly. These are what defile men (Mt.15.19,20)”

Thoughts
Book:The Letters of Pelagius
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