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H Quotes

Browse famous quotes beginning with H. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.

All H Quotes

“How many times do we hear: 'Come on, you Christians, be a little bit more normal, like other people, be reasonable!' This is real snake charmer's talk: 'Come on, just be like this, okay? A little bit more normal, don't be so rigid ...' But behind it is this: 'Don't come here with your stories, that God became man!' The Incarnation of the Word, that is the scandal behind all of this! We can do all the social work we want, and they will say: 'How great the Church is, it does such good social work." But if we say that we are doing it because those people are the flesh of Christ, then comes the scandal. And that is the truth, that is the revelation of Jesus: that presence of Jesus incarnate.”

“How many times do we lose an occasion for soul work by leaping ahead to final solutions without pausing to savor the undertones? We are a radically bottom-line society, eager to act and to end tension, and thus we lose opportunities to know ourselves for our motives and our secrets.”

“How many times do we take credit for the work of our own hands, believing we are working harder and smarter than everyone else, and that somehow we deserve the success we have achieved? Like Nebuchadnezzar, I have basked in my own success and declared my perceived value with only a mere hat-tip to the Creator of it all. I've been full of myself, full of my pride. And like King Nebuchadnezzar, I have stood on the brink of disaster without a worry in the world. "While the word was in the king's mouth, a voice came from heaven, saying, 'King Nebuchadnezzar, to you it is declared: sovereignty has been removed from you'" (Daniel 4:31). The word sovereignty here means the ability to rule the kingdom. The verse is startling. While the boastful words are still in the kings mouth, God takes Nebuchadnezzar's kingdom away from him. In an instant . Wow! Most of my failures have taken some time for the consequences to kick in, but I wonder if there was an instant, while the words were still in my mouth, when the Father determined--at that very moment--so strip me of my kingdom. Perhaps you have witnessed (or experienced) a similar kingdom-stripping.”

“How many times had it been made clear to Fin that he was alone in this world? That no one else could help him, care for him, be there for him? Every night on the edge of sleep, he closed his yes and thought about finding his mother or learning where he came from or coming downstairs and having the Parsnickles pick him up and spin him around and treat him like a normal kid in a normal family. This despair was nothing new. Every single day, he faced the fear that he would be this way forever and nothing would change, and every single day he beat that fear. He'd bitten down sadness before. He would do it again. Every single day, until he did find his mother, and then he would be a normal kid. He had to be.”

“How many times have I failed before? How many times have I stood here like this, in front of my own image, in front of my own person, trying to convince him not to be scared, to go on, to get out of this rut? How many times before I finally convince myself, how many private, erasable deaths will I need to die, how may self-murders is it going to take, how many times will I have to destroy myself before I learn, before I understand?”

“How many times have I gone back to the border of memory and peered into the darkness beyond? But it is not only memories that hover on the border. There are all sorts of phantasmagoria that inhabit that realm. The nightmares of a lonely child. Fairy tales appropriated by a mind hungry for a story. The fantasies of an imaginative little girl anxious to explain to herself the inexplicable. Whatever story I may have discovered on the frontier of forgetting, I do not pretend to myself that is the truth.”

“How many times have I wondered if it is really possible to forge links with a mass of people when one has never had strong feelings for anyone, not even one's own parents: if it is possible to have a collectivity when one has not been deeply loved oneself by individual human creatures. Hasn't this had some effect on my life as a militant--has it not tended to make me sterile and reduce my quality as a revolutionary by making everything a matter of pure intellect, of pure mathematical calculation?”

“How many times have such meetings been held throughout American history? How many times have men. be they private prison executives or convict lessees, gotten together to perform this ritual? They sit in company headquarters or legislative offices, far from their prisons or labor camps, and craft stories that soothe their consciences. They convince themselves, with remarkable ease, that they are in the business of punishment because it makes the world better, not because it makes them rich.”