Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Gift Gugu Mona

Quote by Gift Gugu Mona

Work

Coming to Grips with the Mountains and Valleys of This World

Browse quotes and source details for this work. more

Author

Gift Gugu Mona

Browse famous quotes and profile details for Gift Gugu Mona. more

You May Also Like

“The reason why we have a wrong judgement of the things we mentioned earlier is that we do not look deeply into them to see what they are, but conceive a liking for them or a dislike of them from the very first glance, judging by appearances. These likes and dislikes prejudice our mind and darken it; and so it cannot form a right judgement of things as they really are. So, my brother, if you wish to be free of this prelest in your mind, keep strict attention over yourself; and when you see a thing with your eyes, or visualise it in your mind, keep a firm grip on your desires and do not allow yourself at the first glance either to conceive a liking for the thing or a dislike for it, but examine it in a detached way with the mind alone. Unobscured by passion, the mind then remains in a state natural to it, which is free and pure, and has the possibility to know the truth and to penetrate into the depths of a thing, where evil is often concealed under a deceptively attractive exterior and where good is sometimes hidden under a bad appearance.”

“What is a man, If his chief good and market of his time Be but to sleep and feed? A beast, no more. Sure He that made us with such large discourse, Looking before and after, gave us not That capability and godlike reason To fust in us unused. Now, whether it be Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple Of thinking too precisely on th'event - A thought which, quartered, hath but one part wisdom And ever three parts coward - I do not know Why yet I live to say 'This thing's to do', Sith I have cause, and will, and strength and means To do't.”

“Good apologetics is a blessing to the church and to the world; the early church proved this. A valid apologetic, however, follows faith and does not attempt to argue the truth of revelation in an a priori fashion. Christians need not hide from their opponents in embarrassed silence; the Christian faith is the only worldview that fits the reality of life. Apologetic intellectual labor should not lead to exaggerated expectations nor deny the genuine subjectivity of Christian truth. Relying on reason to convert or ground the faith on intellectual grounds alone will always disappoint.”

“For Hume, Pyrrhonism, like other philosophies, is too ready to assume that our actions are, or at least ought to be, guided by reason at all times. That is looking in the wrong place for the sources of our motivation. The world itself never provides adequate motivation for our choices. It is not the weighing of external evidence but internal desire that determines judgement and action: ‘Nothing can oppose or retard the impulse of passion, but a contrary impulse.’ Indeed, as Bernard Williams later argued, perhaps the very idea of a (purely) external reason is incoherent because there is no account of what is involved in accepting an external reason that does not invoke internal motivation.”

“My reason is simply a greedy lawyer hired by my guilty instincts, feelings, and values to prove them innocent. This lawyer is responsible to conserve and protect my identity from sudden changes. If I adjust my beliefs too quickly and too often—I risk going insane. I’m open-minded only in the sense that my mind is closed by openable windows.”

“Then one morning she’d begun to feel her sorrow easing, like something jagged that had cut into her so long it had finally dulled its edges, worn itself down. That same day Rachel couldn’t remember which side her father had parted his hair on, and she’d realized again what she’d learned at five when her mother left – that what made losing someone you loved bearable was not remembering but forgetting. Forgetting the small things first, the smell of the soap her mother had bathed with, the color of the dress she’d worn to church, then after a while the sound of her mother’s voice, the color of her hair. It amazed Rachel how much you could forget, and everything you forgot made that person less alive inside you until you could finally endure it. After more time passed you could let yourself remember, even want to remember. But even then what you felt those first days could return and remind you the grief that was still there, like old barbed wire embedded in a tree’s heartwood.”