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E.B. White

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“What do you say when I sneeze?"Anton repeated. "Bless you," Kana replied. "Right, but why do you say it?" Kana shrugged. "Sometimes in life, we do things simply because we have always done them,' explained Anton. "Perhaps there were once reasons, but we have forgotten them. A very long time ago, people believed that whenever a person sneezed, their soul exploded out through their mouths and into the air. They also believed that the devil was always lurking about and might snatch up that soul. So they said bless you, to stall the devil until the soul could shoot back down into the person's body." "That's nonsense," said Marin, throwing her hands in the air. "You're probably right," said Anton. "But you still say bless you. And until a moment ago, you didn't even know why.”

HabitsSayingsSneeze
Book:Nightfall
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“As humans, we have invented lots of useful kinds of lie. As well as lies-to-children ('as much as they can understand') there are lies-to-bosses ('as much as they need to know') lies-to-patients ('they won't worry about what they don't know') and, for all sorts of reasons, lies-to-ourselves. Lies-to-children is simply a prevalent and necessary kind of lie. Universities are very familiar with bright, qualified school-leavers who arrive and then go into shock on finding that biology or physics isn't quite what they've been taught so far. 'Yes, but you needed to understand that,' they are told, 'so that now we can tell you why it isn't exactly true.' Discworld teachers know this, and use it to demonstrate why universities are truly storehouses of knowledge: students arrive from school confident that they know very nearly everything, and they leave years later certain that they know practically nothing. Where did the knowledge go in the meantime? Into the university, of course, where it is carefully dried and stored.”

InspirationalHumorScienceEducationKnowledgeTeacherPerceptionLibraryUniversitySurrealismAcademiaPastoral CareTeleologyLie To Children
Book:The Science of Discworld
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“The prayer level of a church never rises any higher than the personal example and passion of the leaders. The quantity and quality of prayer in leadership meetings is the essential indicator of the amount of prayer that will eventually arise among the congregation.”

ChurchPrayerPrayer QuotesRevivalPastorsChurch LeadershipChurch LeadersPastoral MinistryPastoral CarePastoring
Book:Old Paths, New Power: Awakening Your Church through Prayer and the Ministry of the Word
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