To say that one waits a lifetime for his soulmate to come around is a paradox. People eventually get sick of waiting, take a chance on someone, and by the art of commitment become soulmates, which takes a lifetime to perfect.
If love is blind, then maybe a blind person that loves has a greater understanding of it.
I would rather a romantic relationship turn into contempt than turn into apathy. The passion in the extremities make it appear as though it once meant something. We grow from hot or cold, but lukewarm is the biggest insult.
Popular culture is a place where pity is called compassion, flattery is called love, propaganda is called knowledge, tension is called peace, gossip is called news, and auto-tune is called singing.
The reality of loving God is loving him like he’s a Superhero who actually saved you from stuff rather than a Santa Claus who merely gave you some stuff.
It’s not at all hard to understand a person it’s only hard to listen without bias.
You are evidence of your mother’s strength, especially if you are a rebellious knucklehead and regardless she has always maintained her sanity.
Closed in a room, my imagination becomes the universe, and the rest of the world is missing out.
Good works is giving to the poor and the helpless, but divine works is showing them their worth to the One who matters.
I think there is a song out there to describe just about any situation.
I will never deny that life isn’t fair. It seems as though when a woman leaves a man she is strong and independent, but when a man leaves a woman he is a pig and a jerk.
Tell me that the purpose of life is to have fun, and without a care in the world I’ll begin wreaking havoc on everything I pass. Now that’s what I call pure, honest fun.
The harder you fall, the heavier your heart; the heavier your heart, the stronger you climb; the stronger you climb, the higher your pedestal.
A young outcast will often feel that there is something wrong with himself, but as he gets older, grows more confident in who he is, he will adapt, he will begin to feel that there is something wrong with everyone else.
The motive behind criticism often determines its validity. Those who care criticize where necessary. Those who envy criticize the moment they think that they have found a weak spot.
Confidence is like a dragon where, for every head cut off, two more heads grow back.
With a hint of good judgment, to fear nothing, not failure or suffering or even death, indicates that you value life the most. You live to the extreme; you push limits; you spend your time building legacies. Those do not die.
The biggest challenge after success is shutting up about it.
Telling an introvert to go to a party is like telling a saint to go to Hell.
When you’re the only sane person, you look like the only insane person.
Everyone has a sense of humor. If you don’t laugh at jokes, you probably laugh at opinions.
I imagine that the intelligent people are the ones so intelligent that they don’t even need or want to look ‘intelligent’ anymore.
Whenever I think of something but can’t think of what it was I was thinking of, I can’t stop thinking until I think I’m thinking of it again. I think I think too much.
We are often taught to look for the beauty in all things, so in finding it, the layman asks the philosopher while the philosopher asks the photographer.
Question like a child, reason like an adult, and write like a sage.
Beyond all sciences, philosophies, theologies, and histories, a child’s relentless inquiry is truly all it takes to remind us that we don’t know as much as we think we know.
A sign of a lover of wisdom is his delight in not running his mouth about things he doesn’t know.
A writer is one who communicates ideas and emotions people want to communicate but aren’t quite sure how, or even if, they should communicate them.
I cannot encourage any fabrication even for the sake of making people feel good. If I were to fabricate consciously and knowingly, I would not only be ordaining myself their enemy, but also ordaining myself God’s enemy.
There’s more to logic than identifying logical fallacies.
It’s not about whether or not someone is a bigot, but whether or not the argument which that someone is arguing is worth being a bigot about.
Some concepts are so incredibly risky they take an honest fool to try to articulate them.
The best ideas will eat at you for days, maybe even weeks, until something, some incident, some impulse, triggers you to finally express them.
With a philosophy education, one can infuriate his peers, intimidate his date, think of obscure, unreliable ways to make money, and never regret a thing.
It is never ridicule, but a compliment, that knocks a philosopher off his feet. He is already positioned for every possible counter-attack, counter-argument, and retort…only to find a big bear hug coming his way.
I only seem negative to the fortunate. That’s because I show the less fortunate that they aren’t less fortunate after all.
If you use a philosophy education well, you can get your foot in the door of any industry you please. Industries are like the blossoms on a tree while philosophy is the trunk – it holds the tree together, but it often goes unnoticed.
To be a philosopher, just reverse everything you have ever been told…and have a sense of humor doing it.
One does not have to be a philosopher to be a successful artist, but he does have to be an artist to be a successful philosopher. His nature is to view the world in an unpredictable albeit useful light.
Never hide things from hardcore thinkers. They get more aggravated, more provoked by confusion than the most painful truths.
At first, they’ll only dislike what you say, but the more correct you start sounding the more they’ll dislike you.
It’s not about going around trying to stir up trouble. As long as you’re honest and you articulate what you believe to be true, somebody somewhere will become your enemy whether you like it or not.
You can’t let the truth bring out the worst and let it get the best of you.
Always seek justice, but love only mercy. To love justice and hate mercy is but a doorway to more injustice.
I always make sure that the world will prove me right. It gives me the freedom to contradict myself.
Tolerance! The virtue that makes one bite his tongue so that he can tear out his hair.
Cleverness isn’t always true nor is the truth always clever.
Who you are in public is a test of your conviction; who you are in private, integrity.
Of course, in our train of thought, we would all like to think we’re on the right track, or at least the same railroad company as the right track.
Beware: open-mindedness will often say, ‘Everything is permissible except a sharp opinion.
There was a time when skepticism was an act of rebellion. Since to a degree I both believe in evolution and have faith, I can only conclude that, as prophesied, to have faith will someday be an act of rebellion.
Just as some people may conceal their own sinfulness thus seeming better than the norm, others expose their own sinfulness thus seeming worse than the norm.
Trustful people are the pure at heart, as they are moved by the zeal of their own trustworthiness.
As a writer of philosophy, it’s good to ask oneself, ‘Will I still believe this a week from now, or months, or even years?
It always seems as though the definition of love will remain debatable by an opinionated world.
If it’s true what is said, that only the wise discover the wise, then it must also be true that the lone wolf symbolizes either the biggest fool on the planet or the biggest Einstein on the planet.
In God’s eyes, a man who teaches one truth and nothing else is more righteous than a man who teaches a million truths and one lie.
I never feel unsafe except for when the majority is on my side.
What further helps to reveal reality is when our personal thinking ceases to take reality for granted.
Tension, in the long run, is a more dangerous force than any feud known to man.
After awhile you realize that putting your actions where your mouth is makes you less likely to have to put your money where your mouth is.
Many people in a rather reckless context claim to ‘just tell it like it is’. In actuality, nobody really stresses what one says so much as the motive behind what one says; hence, he is merely blowing hot air and detracting from ‘what is’.
Pride and power fall when the person falls, but discoveries of truth form legacies that can be built upon for generations.
Vivid simplicity is the articulation, the nature of genius. Wisdom is greater than intelligence; intelligence is greater than philosobabble.
From time to timeI once wondered how one wanders from time to timeAnd think up the paradox lineSpeak of Epoch’s crimeOh I lied, it hasn’t happened yetBut bet you better believe it’s such a habit thatI just said that in a past mindset
When a man has a gift in speaking the truth, brute aggression is no longer his security blanket for approval. He, on the contrary, spends most of his energy trying to tone it down because his very nature is already offensive enough.
Listen to God with a broken heart. He is not only the doctor who mends it, but also the father who wipes away the tears.
Love is as simple as the absence of self given to another. God, when invited, fills the void of any unrequited love; hence loving is how one is drawn closer to God no matter its most horrific repercussions.
A lonely day is God’s way of saying that he wants to spend some quality time with you.
I’m convinced that most men don’t know what they believe, rather, they only know what they wish to believe. How many people blame God for man’s atrocities, but wouldn’t dream of imprisoning a mother for her son’s crime?
The common man prays, ‘I want a cookie right now!’ And God responds, ‘If you’d listen to what I say, tomorrow it will bring you 100 cookies.
God favors men and women who delight in being made worthy of happiness before the happiness itself.
The humble sinner will sometimes be interpreted as one of the filthiest in the eyes of man yet immersed in the eyes of God, and this is due to the volition of honesty regarding his own corruption.
Great minds think alike because a greater Mind is thinking through them.
Easily mistaken, it is not about a love for adversity, it is about knowing a strength and a faith so great that adversity, in all its adverse manifestations, hardly even exists.
Christians walk as strangers in the world: They are untamed. They are free. To persevere with love, yet untamed by man, is often what leaves that open space for divine revelation when God so wills.
Christ delves far beyond the means of superficiality, not simply because of his immaculate love, but also because he considers the distinct cases of each individual rather than withholding a broadened perception by use of stereotypes.
When you mature in your relationship with God you realize how suffering and patience are like eating your spiritual vegetables.
The love of Christ is always there and unchanging, no matter what we do, but it is when we are obedient that we actually begin to feel it.
I’m always talking to God about whether or not he exists – that’s how I know I’m a theist.
Faithfulness imparts God’s reason for all circumstances. No matter what the world says, losing is no longer an option.
There’s no need to curse God if you’re an ugly duckling. He chooses those strong enough to endure it so that they can guide others who’ve felt the same.
When you find that a theology has nothing more to offer than what the world already offers, then that theology as a theology is impractical, and therefore, useless.
Man has 2 common problems with God: the one is that there is evil in the world; the other is that free will is limited. The one, he is charging that the world is too evil; the other is that it is not evil enough.
Disasters work like alarm clocks to the world, hence God allows them. They are shouting, ‘Wake up! Love! Pray!
One of the greatest gifts from God is the eternal perspective. It is a level of fearlessness, a level of understanding where one can experience even emotional harmony with God.
Everyone claims to be okay with freedom of religion, but the moment you mention God there is a strange tension that fills the air. If there was a 6th sense, that would be it.
Man was designed in a way in which he must eat in order to give him a solid reason to go to work everyday. This helps to keep him out of trouble. God is wise.
Faith, in its most correct form, never removes responsibility; it removes fear of responsibility. The results are complete opposites with the greater saying, ‘God’s will is my delight.
Learning isn’t acquiring knowledge so much as it is trimming information that has already been acquired.
Peaceful disputes are maintained when men sincerely believe that they are morally, logically correct about the issues at hand. It is when neither side is really certain that wars are instigated.
People love answers, but only as long as they are the ones who came up with them.
Never marry when under the guise you need to ‘see if it’ll work’, but rather marry because in your mind you want to make it work.
I’ve come to the point where I never feel the need to stop and evaluate whether or not I am happy. I’m just ‘being’, and without question, by default, it works.
You can’t be a rebel without the scars that come with it. Truth is, some days scars are just as ugly as they are beautiful.
Good…if you’ve done things you aren’t proud of. It means you have a conscience.
It’s simple, it’s not that simple; or life is simple, but the things in it are not. When a man does not understand it, he tends to inflate it. When he does, he tends to deflate it. In the end, neither images are fully accurate.
Never rebel for the sake of rebelling, but always rebel for the sake of truth.
Wisdom is nothing more than confirmed imagination: just because one did not study for his exam does not mean that he should leave it blank.
Store up knowledge. Then question your own knowledge in order to expand your mind, both to build and to create more space. Then store up more knowledge. And so on. That is wisdom.
I do not care about happiness simply because I believe that joy is something worth fighting for.
Imagination doesn’t always make you long for what you cannot have, but rather thrive in what you do not have.
I enjoy melancholic music and art. They take me to places I don’t normally get to go.
Respect? Of course, always, to all, because everything seems funnier when you’re trying to show respect.
If the entire world sought to make itself worthy of happiness rather than make itself happy, then the entire world would be happy.
Ultimate prosperity is one’s value within. It takes a man of depth, morality, and charm to be envied yet without a sign of wealth or romance. A passion to prove such inner worth is his permission to achieve whatever he desires.
Love is one of those topics that plenty of people try to write about but not enough try to do.
I would rather my descendants have greater abilities and a greater knowledge of the love of Christ than I do, much like standing on one’s shoulders in order to get a clearer view of the valley.
With no positivity, there is no hope; with no negativity, there is no improvement.
Through Christ, the sting of death is but a gentle pinch to the soul; and the mourn is light. Perhaps, someday, in that glorious place, free of sin, we shall meet again.
For those constantly full of joy, they sometimes feel a little guilty for always feeling so good. That guilt is compassion: it flies in with an attempt to share one’s joy with others who do not have it.
The power of hope! Even a lack of ambition can, for a time, pay off as a necessary facet, as long as hope outweighs it.
There is a certain delightful sort of hope which the introvert can receive only by having company over…the hope that they will leave soon.
The idea that all souls are mortal is the only notion surely terminating love and all its forms.
A poet should be so crafty with words that he is envied even for his pains.
Anger’s like a battery that leaks acid right out of meAnd it starts from the heart ’til it reaches my outer me
Oh I know it’s cliché but yeah they say that great men make it in-To places few others who even do take the risk’ve ever been
There have been times I’ve felt so much art in my soul I grew sick of artists.
You ask me why I don’t speakNot a word at willBut write so much worth well over a mill’Well I value words like I value kissesA sober one, a closer one penetrates the heartDarling it’s how it mends it
If I knew what to doI’d do more than write a song for you
There is a master way with words which is not learned but is instead developed: a deaf man develops exceptional vision, a blind man exceptional hearing, a silent man, when given a piece of paper…
Persistence. Perfection. Patience. Power. Prioritize your passion. It keeps you sane.
In order to share one’s true brilliance one initially has to risk looking like a fool: genius is like a wheel that spins so fast, it at first glance appears to be sitting still.
If you’re waiting until you feel talented enough to make it, you’ll never make it.
It’s a good sign but rare instance when, in a relationship, you find that the more you learn about the other person, the more you continue to desire them. A sturdy bond delights in that degree of youthful intrigue. Love loves its youth.
I believe in evolution in the sense that a short-tempered man is the successor of a crybaby.
When your only regret is if anyone thinks you regret anything – that is the definition of conviction.
In the end, only God can see the heart of an individual and distinguish the difference between legalistic deadweight and the passion of holy solemnity.
Doubt is a question mark; faith is an exclamation point. The most compelling, believable, realistic stories have included them both.
When comprehending how different people truly are, you also comprehend the absolute necessity of some divine authority.
The rather difficult antagonists towards the Church consist not nearly of the cruel and heartless, nihilistic intellectuals who hate God and humanity, but the well-meaning spirits who for the most part lack an understanding of the Spirit.
When a poet digs himself into a hole, he doesn’t climb out. He digs deeper, enjoys the scenery, and comes out the other side enlightened.
Because there are hundreds of different ways to say one thing, I, being a writer, songwriter, and poet, speak childishly and incoherently. In speech there is so much to decide in so little time.
If you have to say or do something controversial, aim so that people will hate that they love it and not love that they hate it.
These days when Christians bicker they exaggerate passion into a legalistic belief and prosperity into a lukewarm belief.
I think a lot of psychopaths are just geniuses who drove so fast that they lost control.
When most of the greatest individuals in history were misunderstood and you’ve spent so much of your own adult life misunderstood, you can’t help but believe that the majority of people know very little worth knowing.
It’s a huge disservice to classify all minds as either closed or open. I find the best minds are closed by openable windows.
Pride is pride not because it hates being wrong, but because it loves being wrong: To hate being wrong is to change your opinion when you are proven wrong; whereas pride, even when proven wrong, decides to go on being wrong.
To respect a mystery is to make way for the answer.
Some of the most polished ideas are discovered through healthy, honest debate, so if you don’t argue with yourself every once in a while, other people will gladly point out if, in any sense, you missed a spot.
If your doctrine changed for the better yet your character changed for the worse, you changed for the worse.
We must not allow our pride to be the motivation behind our apologetics; rather, philoverity, the love of truth must be the full and complete motivation. For pride corrupts truth.
All knowledge meets an end at the question ‘…Why?
Truth is not fully explosive, but purely electric. You don’t blow the world up with the truth; you shock it into motion.
Pure wisdom is the ‘fruit of life’ banal platitudes are the ‘bane of existence’.
How easy it is for so many of us today to be undoubtedly full of information yet fully deprived of accurate information.
Because you’re always learning, the chief lesson remains: you still know nothing.
When emerging from humble beginnings, those around you tend to underestimate your authenticity because they knew you before you were ‘somebody’.
Soar with wit. Conquer with dignity. Handle with care.
I’d rather strive for the kind of interview where instead of me asking to introduce myself to society, society asks me to introduce myself to society.
There’s sometimes a tugging feeling you get to push further when you aren’t being challenged enough or when things get too comfortable.
Gloating is a superficial glowing, floating is an idle flowing, and bloatedness is the paralysis of blowing up; because silent movement results in loud victories.
It is easier for one to take risks and to chase his dreams with a mindset that he has nothing to lose. In this lies the immense passion, the great advantage of avoiding a materialistic, pleasure-filled way of life.
It is a healthy approach not to expect persons to turn out precisely how you would have wished.
The manlier you are, the harder it is to understand what a woman wants: there is not a hint of female brain in you.
Love tames the benumbed beast. A man is put to use regarding a woman’s physical safety, but a woman is put to use regarding a man’s mental safety.
Women rescue men just as much as, if not more than, men rescue women.
We men are fascinated by the things we don’t really understand. It gives us something to think and talk about: like females, they drive us nuts.
All men are born firstly with the instinct to protect themselves. But few grow to really love themselves, and even fewer learn to love their neighbor as themselves.
You have to lift a person up before you can really put them in their place.
The writer’s curse is that even in solitude, no matter its duration, he never grows lonely or bored.
We often hear about stepping outside ourselves, but rarely about stepping outside our generation.
I feel as though whenever I create something, my Mr. Hyde wakes up in the middle of the night and starts thrashing it. I sometimes love it the next morning, but other times it is an abomination.
If I were to vote, I would intentionally vote for the goofiest candidate. It is my theory that when the people can outwit the leader, the more respected their voices will be.
Psychobabble attempts to redefine the entire English language just to make a correct statement incorrect. Psychology is the study of why someone would try to do this.
The logic behind patriotism is a mystery. At least a man who believes that his own family or clan is superior to all others is familiar with more than 0.000003% of the people involved.
I am not sure if women are attracted to genius. Can you imagine the wise wizard winning the woman over the gallant swordsman? It seems rather otherworldly in more ways than one.
The ones who constantly make us laugh are the hardest of friends to know – for comedians are the caricatures among us.
Whenever you feel like feeling like a devil’s advocate, Bible-thump. That, in a worldly world, is the great irony and satire of evangelism.
I claim neither liberalism nor conservatism – one tends to be airheaded while the other tends to be brickheaded.
The only activity a cynic will find contagious is yawning, that is, with other people, at other people.
They say the crazies come out at night. I say the crazies come out during election year: Elections have the power to turn once seemingly normal people into certified loonies.
April Fools’ is the only day to take people seriously.
It’s much easier on the emotions when one sees life as an experiment rather than a struggle for popularity.
The Christian God seemed the most offensive to people precisely because he was the most godlike. He was too perfect even to be coaxed by human efforts, and therefore sent his son to do the job.
In an extroverted society, the difference between an introvert and an extrovert is that an introvert is often unconsciously deemed guilty until proven innocent.
It has always seemed that a fear of judgment is the mark of guilt and the burden of insecurity.
Companionship is a foreign concept to some people. They fear it as much as the majority of people fear loneliness.
Those who speak of progression but are afraid of change are self-repressed and therefore unable to reach any further than their eyes can already see.
The most judgmental people are often those who complain most about being judged. The ones not complaining will look as though they’re the ones doing the judging.
What may intimidate a man is a woman who thinks with her mind before she feels with her heart. Nevertheless what determines the strength in the man is his ability to accept one when he sees one.
To fear man’s judgment more than God’s judgment is to fear man more than God.
On the one hand you had people constantly fighting Hell; on the other, you had people constantly fighting Hell on earth.
It is not true that everyone is special. It is true that everyone was once special and still possesses the ability to recover it.
Whenever we want to combat our enemies, first and foremost we must start by understanding them rather than exaggerating their motives.
To ask, ‘How do you do it?’ is already starting off on the wrong foot. When reaching for the stars, there does not have to be a ‘how’ if there is a big enough ‘why’.
The artist lives to have stories to tell and to learn to tell them well.
Unlike wealth, there is an infinite value in legacy.
Women show men beauty in things beyond their ambitions. Women tell men to stop and smell the roses.
Man was created to glorify God. Now, that may encompass other things which God has planned for each man, but essentially, man was created to glorify God.
Thunderstorms are as much our friends as the sunshine.
In a general sense, I admit to valuing the worldviews of men under the age of 40 and women over the age of 30.
We have better relationships with those who truly seek us rather than those sitting on the couch watching us move mountains trying to prove ourselves.
When you meet someone, and you find that they are prejudiced against your kind, it might be your chance, not to confirm, but to be the one to finally change their mind.
Love may be harder to find in some people, but when they do love you know it must be something marvelous.
I think that I am too warm to negatively judge individuals, yet I am cold enough to negatively judge humanity.
When it comes to judging individuals, I do not like remarks such as ‘too good to be true.’ They speak as though one is rewarding the nature of evil. Yet, ironically, we still wonder where all the good people have gone.
The love of conflict is most evident when opposing forces join sides to defeat the peacemaker.
When it comes to world news, attitude is what marks the distinction between justice and vengeance. Justice is pure, but vengeance brings more ruin.
Best to live and love by the maxim that ‘silence in the face of evil is evil itself’, but when it’s evil fighting evil, let evil kill itself.
Peace ought not be regarded the height of civilization, else like barbarians we forever battle for peace.
Their doubt is your fuel for dreams. You just have to drive.
Sometimes a people lose their right to remain silent when pressured to remain silent.
When you aren’t satisfied with what has already been done, make something better. That is the greatest responsibility and the true freedom of creativity. The freedom is in that it doesn’t need to complain.
If ever it’s necessary to ride the bandwagon, it’s done with one leg swinging out and eyes scoping the fields.
Freedom of speech is detestable only to those who have no desire to think for themselves.
To be respected is not my concern. So long as I seek to live in obedience to my Lord, respect will come accordingly from the people He deems it necessary.
The way of the consumerist culture is to spend so much energy chasing happiness that it has none left to be happy.
Even the self-assured truth-finders and self-proclaimed freedom-fighters reject Truth. As admirable as such endeavors may be, they still only really want it so long as it to some extent confirms what they had already presumed to be true.
Those who stand for different causes during different generations often experience the same oppositions and the same difficulties as those of the previous and the next generations. That is the basis of history repeating itself.
Christ died not so that you could freely go on sinning, and therefore, continue dying; He died rather so that you could freely grow in obedience, and therefore, start living.
I am not convinced within myself that to its core and as a whole, humanity has, as some like to assume, progressed a great deal over the millennia. Human technology? Of course. Human beings? Hardly.
Perhaps not everything happens for a reason. That is, until you make it so; because for everything there is a season, which can, in fact, become beautiful.
To understand even remotely the holy omnipotence of God is to understand at least from mostly to wholly the magnificence of Christ.
If beauty is relative, then any and everything when compared to the beauty of God is absolutely hideous.
Together, we form a necessary paradox; not a senseless contradiction.
For the believer, humility is honesty about one’s greatest flaws to a degree in which he is fearless about truly appearing less righteous than another.
All individuals have moral deficiencies, and when introducing these to reality one not only strengthens himself but also the confidence of others in the human exigency for Christ due to a reflection throughout the body of Christ.
Christ commands his people to love their enemies, because if not, that would rule out pretty much the entire world.
Growing up I sometimes imagined that for Christ’s return perhaps He would appear as ‘Black Jesus’ to white people and ‘White Jesus’ to black people just to screw with the racists.
Some of the simplest of truths are also some of the most difficult of truths, but such is Christianity: ‘If it’s not about Christ, it’s not about life.
Every exceptional bias against Christianity I find to be evidence for its validity.
Without Christ a people may always have the freedom to do, but never the power to complete.
Emotion is always multiplied in the art of a person who doesn’t really show much emotion. It once expanded deep within his hidden soul, and following the downplay his audience is blown away.
Like most arts, the link between the mind and the pen can chain you like an enslaved workaholic. Even on an intended vacation you suddenly have this killer urge to record whatever the vacation may teach.
A sign of power in a man is not only when people follow what he suggests, but also when people make a conscious effort to do the exact opposite of what he suggests.
All great leaders find a sense of balance through their levels of reception. For instance, those who support a leader may soften him, those who ignore him may challenge him, and those who oppose him may stroke his ego.
Everyone has their own ways of expression. I believe we all have a lot to say, but finding ways to say it is more than half the battle.
I’m often painted as the bad guy, and the artistic part of me wants to hand out the brush.
From recovery to rags and rags to recovery symbolizes art – a perfect compilation of human imperfections.
I’m never proud of my old work. I always feel as though my skills have since improved.
I’m a peasantI’m the muzhikA pest you’re destined to play the musicAnd yes it’s pleasant to say it’s beauty I’mIndebted to rest respecting it truly
It is by continuing to put out good work that the artist best shows his gratitude.
In the heart of appeasement there’s the fear of rejection, and in acts of fear there are mirrors of oppression.
The extent of creativity to which I admire in an individual is his ability to be richly creative while still, in a way, telling the truth. It is the fool who creates only his own lies, and the bore who simply repeats what he is told.
Intelligence entails a strong mind, but genius entails a heart of a lion in tune with a strong mind.
The role of genius is not to complicate the simple, but to simplify the complicated.
Creativity is the highest form of intelligence. Over time, after developing a more advanced creative brain, I started feeling that my college education was more so something to be ashamed of rather than something to be proud of.
Armed neutrality makes it much easier to detect hypocrisy.
Genius, throughout history, has been found difficult to classify because it varies in amount: It’s rare to find a genius in the context of the noun, but most people, if not all, have a bit of genius in them in the context of the adjective.
It is not that men become too intelligent for God,’ says the Apologist, ‘but rather they become too arrogant for intelligence.
Any halfway clever devil would decorate the highway to Hell as beautiful as possible.
The internet is where some people go to show their true intelligence; others, their hidden stupidity.
Rather than swallowing our pride and simply asking what we do not know, we choose to fill in the blanks ourselves and later become humbled. Wisdom was often, in its youth, proven foolish, and ones humiliated were meant to become wise.
If Christians always seemed to be the most intelligent and the most righteous of men, I’d be a skeptic.
Only the man who thinks himself a fool is as wise as he thinks.
Unsettling are the days in which everyone is an expert.
I respect traditional people – they have the eyes which see value in the tarnished. This is a gift in itself. Tradition requires a wealth of discipline in order to be adhered to, hence it is rarely found in youth.
Knowing the truth is so minuscule compared to having the nerve to say it…and even more to live it.
You can never make someone like something they don’t like, but you can always help them to better understand it.
There is this common notion that people are shallow and ignorant until they go out and see the world. I, on the other hand, went out and in comparison realized I was in pretty good standing.
A number of our scientists boast intelligence but lack wisdom. I find those to be the predictable ones.
The survival of poor opinions can make a thinker feel as though he is failing humanity.
So, how close are love and genius, really? We know that they are both mentioned far more than lived.
You wander. You work nearly every job known to man, it seems, only to arrive at the wonderings of philosophy.
Angels are good not simply because they see bad as bad, but also because they see bad as corny.
The best people are always the worst. They drive everyone mad by being so good at second-guessing everything bad.
To be intuitive is to possess a godly characteristic: to be bad at second-guessing the good.
Never take advice about never taking advice. That is an old vice of men – to dish it out without being able to take it – the blind leading the blind into more blindness.
Let our information and social technologies raise awareness and not propaganda, build connections and not passive-aggression.
If you’re not a smart worker, it’s about how hard you work double the amount from the heart; if you’re not a hard worker, it’s about how smart you work but times two from the brain.
Be careful not to appear obsessively intellectual. When intelligence fills up, it overflows a parody.
If what you create seems to turn out much stranger than who you are as a person, it’s probably because your heart is talking.
Every new generation believes its own period to be absolutely superior intellectually – greater than all past cultures yet equal among its modern cultures.
The unteachable man is sentenced to being taught only by experience. The tragedy is he reaches nothing further than his own pain.
If a man cannot understand the beauty of life, it is probably because life never understood the beauty in him.
The weather is nature’s disruptor of human plans and busybodies. Of all the things on earth, nature’s disruption is what we know we can depend on, as it is essentially uncontrolled by men.
People will seek the ends of the galaxy to avoid that which they need most.
Every job from the heart is, ultimately, of equal value. The nurse injects the syringe; the writer slides the pen; the farmer plows the dirt; the comedian draws the laughter. Monetary income is the perfect deceiver of a man’s true worth.
What is hard work? It takes strength, energy, and stress to truly care about others enough to place oneself last, but it is easy to wrap oneself up and selfishly scramble on the heads of others.
Man is not, by nature, deserving of all that he wants. When we think that we are automatically entitled to something, that is when we start walking all over others to get it.
Grudges are for those who insist that they are owed something; forgiveness, however, is for those who are substantial enough to move on.
Peace is more of an internal settlement rather than what is visible on the external.
Any coward can be a peacekeeper! In fact, that comes to one naturally. But they are blessed, the peacemakers…and all those who know the difference.
You might be an introvert if you were ready to go home before you left the house.
There are 2 kinds of fighters: those who fight because they hate, and those who fight because they love.
No matter how kind you are, always expect a few imbeciles.
Work was intended not to give a man a reason to live, but rather to give him a means to live.
Speaking a painful truth should be done only in love – like wielding a sword with no hilt – it should pain oneself in direct proportion to the amount of force exerted.
If truth is like the terrain, are we the generation who sees it as one who has worn shoes all his life or one who has never worn shoes? Yet still, even if the walk starts out as painful, the experience may be well worth it.
It is in the nature of man to want what he does not have. This modern concern for happiness seems a real testimony of its absence.
From attraction and affectionCover of perfectionFailure beyond texture to a painful lessonEverything that was from the start wasn’t from the heart
Jealousy from a love affair is something even God can admit.
One may suffer the long-term in order to grow in appreciation for the small things. For in short-term suffering, one only notices the large.
The purest regret, no matter what, is thinking you didn’t love enough.
Stretched and skewedTap of the 8-ball and the cueScratches fall throughThey are the scars of you
To be happy to be sad and sad to be happy is to sing an echo in that beautiful language called Sorrow.
Every category has its snobs: music, books, movies. There are so many things a man is only pressured into liking or disliking.
When there’s music in your soul, there’s soul in your music.
In the fashion industry, everything goes retro except the prices.
Be willing to give, but only when you aren’t expecting anything in return.
When enemies, the intellect and the heart only see one another as the hater and the fool.
A pure heart does not demean the spirit of an individual, it, instead, compels the individual to examine his spirit.
In their minds, it seems as though people don’t often have the same answers, but in their hearts, they do very frequently have the same questions.
The funny thing about the heart is a soft heart is a strong heart, and a hard heart is a weak heart.
A fruitless year, take a fearless heartOne that blooms late will flourish in the dark
To esteem what makes you holy over what makes you happy – that is the greatest dare.
His mindIt says survival of the fittest butHis soulRevival of the idiotsSo good riddance, dancing
The best of fiction, as we know, of course, doesn’t tell the truth; it tales the truth.
Nightmares are seldom a foreshadowing of real events, but always a showing of real fears.
It is so easy at times for a lonely individual to begin fantasizing about what the people outside are saying about him and, in result, irrationally and fearfully, and sometimes angrily, fancy himself a villain.
People don’t care about being duped as long as they’re happy, which is the shortest form of happiness; hence ‘self-duprication’ becomes a habit.
You are the enemy and a vessel through which the cure flows – if Christ lives in you, then you are an embodiment of the very shot this hostile and crying world needs as it, in every waking moment, struggles belligerently to resist.
Christ didn’t join in. He saw which direction the rocks were being thrown, and became a shield.
Respect elders; protect children. This I do believe. As a young man it is sometimes, in a charitable sense, difficult to shake the sentiment that every elderly person is my grandparent, and every child is my child.
That which you love most will then become both your strength and your weakness.
Good friends will allow you to be as innocent and free as a child when in private, and as wise and mature as an adult when in public.
Love without humility results in the inclination to act as everyone’s parent, humility without love results in the need to be everyone’s child, and love with humility results in the desire to be a friend.
Seemingly minor yet persistent things penetrate the mind over time making it difficult to ever realize the impact; hence, though quite unfortunate, the most dangerous forms of corruption are those that are subtle and below the radar.
I treat my thoughts like an old person treats their valuables: I cannot for the life of me proceed to throwing them out.
I suspect that ‘Kindness and Cruelty’ and ‘Mercy and Justice’ all have secret affairs, as though they rendezvous only within certain sophisticated souls: those who hate being offensive, but love telling the truth.
To claim that one can never live a positive life with a negative mind is a very negative claim to make!
The complete recipe for imagination is absolute boredom.
You think you’re losing your mind, but do keep in mind, as long as you may, that the ability to go on thinking such a thing means it’s not all gone.
Advanced technology does not always promise a more intelligent civilization. On the contrary, the more the common people rely on technology to do their thinking and solving for them, the less practice there is left for their own brains.
Conscious minds can, at the most, comprehend that the whole idea of a ‘God’ is his superiority, his omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience; and therefore, at the least, desire him, someone far greater than themselves.
To seek greatness is the only righteous vengeance.
Where God is like the sun, the Devil is like a raindrop. There is no ‘God vs. Satan’ because they aren’t even that close in power and authority. The former is very patient; the latter is at mercy.
If only we were all better educated. If then, higher education would at last be a journey for skill and knowledge rather than for power and status.
Power without compassion is like a giant that blocks the sunlight.
This is almost always the case: A piece of art receives its f(r)ame when found offensive.
Where everyone wants to be a leader, it makes one a follower to want to be a leader, and a leader to know what to follow.
Competition works best in sports, but humans get addicted to stuff.
In the land where excellence is commended, not envied, where weakness is aided, not mocked, there is no question as to how its inhabitants are all superhuman.
Sometimes it takes a lowly, title-less man to humble the world. Kings, rulers, CEOs, judges, doctors, pastors, they are already expected to be greater and wiser.
Labeled fools to the world are geniuses to the cosmos.
Keep your finger on the pulse of society, take controversies with a grain of salt, lick your finger and then lift it to the wind; always know what is going on, my friend, so this world can never steer you wrong again.
False humility is quite like the worst of both worlds: both that of Meekness and that of Conceit.
Fame is an island, and right before the castaway, the getaway of being known without being known.
The evangelist is the world’s hopeless romantic, and just like a hopeless romantic, he must hope for the miracle of God more than the romance itself.
The last thing Scripture should do is make you blind in the world. Instead, you hear everything, see everything, and feel everything because everything just so happens to point right back to it.
During the flames of controversy, opinions, mass disputes, conflict, and world news, sometimes the most precious, refreshing, peaceful words to hear amidst all the chaos are simply and humbly ‘I don’t know.
The sea in all its vastness is its own, real world. Man is nature’s sci-fi.
If you build the guts to do something, anything, then you better save enough to face the consequences.
Everyone pretends to be ‘free thinkers’, but few individuals pass the line into expressive territories that may be detrimental to their own social well-being.
If ever you feel like an animal among men, be a lion.
A lack of common sense usually ends in some heroic feat, much like the soldier who dives onto the grenade so that others may live.
The real test of love is loving those who we feel are the hardest ones to love.
A true prophet would rather be believed false by many but actually true than believed true by many but actually false.
Your love is as stable as you are: It’s not about how good a person makes you feel, but rather what good you can do for them.
Dreams and freedom are the same. In order for them to be, they come with a price.
Frequent risk-takers have had their fair shares of failures and successes, hence, being confident in reaching their goals, they will usually seem insensitive to whether or not they look foolish or cool to other people.
The greater ignorance towards a country is not ignoring what its politicians have to say, it is ignoring what the inmates in its prisons have to say.
Men seek a great deal, but fatally close, albeit very different, is one’s pride in proving oneself right with one’s zeal for finding the truth.
If you want to find the real competition, just look in the mirror. After awhile you’ll see your rivals scrambling for second place.
Oftentimes in reality, the genius is in the position of the antihero. Neither the good guys nor the bad guys really trust him because his truth is universal.
…And maybe one day you will wake up as an infant in a completely different universe, and your entire life thus far was just one big dream.
The hype cheapens the hyped, as right things are then made wrong by exaggeration.
Reality. It is sometimes brought through foreign eyes; because if you do not know any better, you cannot see the worse (and vice versa).
The hope is indeed that some will experience and believe: The purpose of a number of spiritual gurus is to demonstrate to God-fearing men faux spirituality.
The trouble with poetry is it’s often written to the sound of a drum only the poet may hear; nonetheless, blessed are those poets who always manage to find unshakeable pleasure in their own works.
After each of his books, the writer, for a while, feels once again that he can now die happy.
God loves each person, I believe; although, just like we do in our private homes, He reserves His kingdom only for those whom He enjoys.
I am often guilty of expecting the worst so as to avoid disappointment and welcome surprise.
Fresh, solid ideas feel like gifts to writers, therefore every morning is Christmas.
Many of us fight for and boast our freedom of what is ultimately the ability to prove ourselves to other people. It is unfortunate that only a few of us are so free in our joy, we no longer feel the need to prove ourselves to anyone.
A rebel adult often seems like a glorious savior, whereas a rebel child often seems like a little devil.
Rebuke without love is abuse. But, a love that would never rebuke? I dare to admit that that, too, would be a kind of abuse.
Children are the most reasonable about discipline. When they tell you not to do something, it’s always because they know why.
God speaks of his children shining best in ways that only he can provide. The heavens lift one as a golden child while the flesh lowers one to a child with gold.
We first become salesmen as children in the confession booths of our parents.
I find it a challenge to cooperate in a society where it’s considered moral to critique a résumé yet immoral to critique morality.
Some skeptics believe religious people are religious because they fear Hell. It’s about as fair as saying skeptics are skeptics because they fear the ridicule of modern society.
In a society where dirt sells, for every good story told as it is, you will hear the whole of that day’s 10 bad stories sensationalized; although in reality, it could be that 100 good deeds happened that day which went unsung.
A thief is one who insists on sharing his victimhood.
It is the nature of physics to hear the loudest of mouths over the most comprehensive ones.
Society tells me to follow my own truth, but I don’t let society tell me what to do. If you need someone to tell you that, chances are you’re part of the crowd that will move on to the next fashion that comes around.
Most people want so desperately to be an individual yet are so easily shaped by the media.
When a man is penalized for honesty he learns to lie.
When good people consider you the bad guy, you develop a heart to help the bad ones. You actually understand them.
Few endeavors, if any at all, I find to be inherently mature or inherently immature. Maturity is neither defined by one’s particular preferences nor by one’s particular activities; rather, it is defined by the strength of one’s character.
One either cares what others think about him, or cares what others think he thinks about them. If you want to find someone who doesn’t care in the slightest what anyone thinks, try a lunatic asylum.
Confirmation bias is the most effective way to go on living a lie.
The hardest chore to do, and to do right, is to think. Why do you think the common man would choose labor, partially, as a distraction from his own thoughts? It is because that level of stress, he most absolutely abhors.
Pride is born as a mountaintop on a valley, but dies as an abyss in which it is too deep and too dark to see the better.
Unprovoked hostility is often but displaced self-defense: ‘I must stop him before he stops me.’ In many of such environments, nobody is really hateful so much as they are just fearful.
Envy is a sign of insecurity, yes; but so is longing to be envied.
To swear day and night by media slander will make one a bigger victim than the slandered. It doesn’t take much to begin to fear a mere illusion of human badness.
God loves atheists. The former ones make the most compelling theists because they’re so empirically familiar with how atheists think.
The hardest thing for a sane person to do is not care what anyone thinks, although everyone swears by it, hence our glorification of insanity.
The self-centered man will always expect nothing but praise. He will hope and expect all incoming criticism to be mere self-projection from the critic because when you’re self-centered, self-projection is all you can imagine one can do.
Look for the person everyone hates, and love them.
The hard part about one being tough yet meek is the illusion of being a punching bag.
The most important part of discernment is pinpointing the forces to be reckoned with, both the constructive and destructive.
Astray from a deep sleep chronic as I write by phonics, like insomnia I will always live the onyx night for revealing, and, upon it, still I’ll steal the bright light of day right away just to keep building at speeds hypersonic.
Hopefully, when your actions and deeds – and therefore other people – boast for you, you’re made tired of hearing it, too, from your own mouth because if not, all could lose sight of those actions and deeds behind the gong of your boasting.
What men classify as living is often but the discontentment of making oneself itch just to enjoy the scratch.
When everyone believes they are the life coaches, who are the players?
The most fragile, unhappy people destine themselves to live lives of constantly reminding themselves to be happy.
Creative people are often found either disagreeable or intimidating by mediocrities.
Thoughts are like burning stars, and ideas, they flood, they stretch the universe.
When you have wit of your own, it’s a pleasure to credit other people for theirs.
I would rather be an artist than a leader. Ironically, a leader has to follow the rules.
Whether you try too hard to fit in or you try too hard to stand out, it is of equal consequence: you exhaust your significance.
Fashion is simply a guideline for style-less people to appear stylish.
I enjoy poetry where I can talk as bizarre as I please, but theology or philosophy, I always respect the truth by taking it a step further.
One who enjoys finding errors will then start creating errors to find.
Pseudo-artists think that being an artist means opposing whatever seems to be an establishment. That is not creative at all. True creativity is the ability to gain perspective wherever you may have missed it before.
Yes, be different, but not for the vanities of being different.
It is sometimes but the mere hope for enjoyment that allows one to enjoy something, even when he is not really enjoying it at the moment.
A prophet is always underestimated, and part of what makes one a prophet is that he doesn’t really mind it.
What man is really anti-progressive? For he is only anti-certain-people’s-visions-for-the-future.
You are believing not in your god but in yourself if your god knows no better than you do…and yet, in this alone, I am afraid, you have already been fooling yourself.
I once began to ask around what constitutes a good poem. It felt petty, in a sense. A boy would need no help in deciding which girls he thinks are pretty.
I pity the man who praises God only when things go his way.
You can receive all the compliments in the world, but that won’t do a thing unless you believe it yourself.
Naturally, I always place my word over anyone else’s simply because I know why I said what I said.
People think that fun in Christ is non-existent, but there is fun wherever your heart lives.
To believe in the truth of Christ is to be introduced to another form of hatred, and that is not sharing Him.
A major gap between many of the denominations stems from how people define some of the most basic terms, such as ‘religion’ itself.
Silence might be a shout for the truth. It might be the speech that someday, in its truest, most uncontaminated, unadulterated state, all will be revealed.
God wants us to humbly and sincerely ask him things. How often do you enjoy people talking about you without taking the time to get to know you?
With too much pride a man cannot learn a thing. In and of itself, learning teaches you how foolish you are.
An exceedingly confident student would in theory make a terrible student. Why would he take school seriously when he feels that he can outwit his teachers?
There’s a difference between thinking you can’t be wrong and having no regrets. Wrongness is what occurs prior to empiricism, in hindsight a counterpart of revelation, and revelation is nothing to regret.
The humble ones are always learning and improving, and their secret is always that it’s a secret.
I’m starting to think that my level of intrigue outweighs my fear of controversy.
On athleticism, God knows no favor. It seems rather he is in the business of teaching winners how to lose and losers how to win.
While there may be various tips, pointers, ingredients, and strategies to success, there is no one formula that always guarantees it other than to keep learning from failure itself.
Peculiar I say, how so often the smallest, most seemingly insignificant details later unveil their faces as vital means for progression.
Of course we’ll win. And even if we were to lose, we’d win at losing.
It is better to doubt that a concept is stupidly flying under your head than profoundly flying over your head.
The surface of learning is hearing what your ears aren’t prepared to hear, and the core of learning is hearing what your ears don’t want to hear.
The whole bloated sensation of success is wiped clean when among family. There is no pressure of being looked upon as ‘the brilliant one’ but rather the comforts of always being the pupil.
To the short-sighted, through the fog, God must be a monster.
I am not here to merely argue about the perplexities regarding theism or philosophy, but to be a light to the world and to reach out to those who long to be a part of that light.
Ingredients to success: know what you do well, know what to do well, and know someone who’s swell.
Even the richest of brands are robbed by poor character.
The apologist is most entrusted with apologetics when capable of arguing his opponent’s position better than his opponent.
To love without need or without expectation of restitution, that is how we ought to love.
Do not tell someone you are hungry if, whenever they feed you, you do not eat.
Christianity is at its purest a philosophy about a person, Jesus Christ, and at its dirtiest a philosophy about requirements and law.
A man does not have to feel less than human to realize his sin; oppositely, he has to realize that he gets no special vindication for his sin.
Let what offends God offend me, and what God pardons, I pardon.
Lead’s erasing then vanishingBanished from whatever it is they’re drinking and it’s cleanedRunning from the pitcher as if it’s her fantasy
Growing up I often wondered how the world would be today if, since the beginning of human life, every person acted as I did.
Simply minding one’s own business is more offensive than being intrusive. Without ever saying a word one can make a person feel less-than.
I’ve finally decided to write about profit for a changeBut before I really started I already started to feel lameBaby what’s it to a beast who manely to money remains untamed
In a sense, discouragement does not have to exist. Allow it to be rather the encouragement to honestly reconsider all the options, then, as necessary, shine on.
Wherever there is abuse there is also corruption. Politics, philosophy, theology, science, industry, any field with the potential to affect the well-being of others can be destroyed by abuse and saved by good will.
If I do not love my fellow man, I can be sure of it that I do not love Jesus Christ. And I would do well if guilty of loving Jesus Christ even more than I love my fellow man, because only by this may I fully come to love my fellow man.
There is not one harsher, more sure-fire way to fail than that of the man who tries to be like Jesus without submitting to Jesus.
God hates sin not because he wants us to be good little boys and girls, but because he knows sin destroys that which he loves most: sinners.
A mature heart for Christ would much rather spend its time praising him than condemning his fanatics.
People, generally, are equally insecure. They just show it (or hide it) differently.
Perhaps a seemingly dull, boring person is not a person who lacks personality, but rather a person with so much personality most other things bore them.
Treat people like people. Beware of pity and patronization because in them, you can’t see when you’re unashamedly looking down on someone.
It’s easy to make a mess when you’re not the one who has to clean it up.
When you’re appeasing too much, you might be egotistically over-estimating everyone’s need for your approval.
Those ‘back burner’ thoughts, the ones the brain isn’t quite sure about yet, may cook the slowest yet they often manage to be the tastiest when they come out.
For the case that one thinks he has plateaued in life, God has already set yet another peak for him to reach: and a much more challenging peak than his own, one that which is to serve others.
Like crying wolf, if you keep looking for sympathy as a justification for your actions, you will someday be left standing alone when you really need help.
The spirit of arrogance most definitely makes you shine. It paints a bright red target on your own forehead.
If you’re capable of despising your own behavior, you might just love yourself.
Let me be content with myself to the degree that my capacity to serve others is present, yet discontent with myself to the degree that I may still like to grow in better service for others.
We are to love God most importantly so that we can grow to love people as he loved us, not so that we can feel more divine and worthy than the worldly.
An anomaly has his own ambitions. You can try reasoning with him, but that’s like using money to bribe a beast.
To spend your time wanting things is to smother your time for achieving things beyond your expectations.
The 2 extremes, neither one worse than the other: the result of bad religion is self-loathing and violence; the result of bad spirituality is self-worship and narcissism.
You can be yourself without pursuing yourself. Have you ever seen a dog chase his own tail? He just runs in circles.
No man voluntarily expresses his opinion without some intent to make a difference, and even if he does, he shouldn’t.
Reason begets honesty, and honesty, if given its head, begets confidence; so consequently, there is a sort of grand authority in the stances of those who know why they are standing.
A wise man’s goal shouldn’t be to say something profound, but to say something useful.
A part of me genuinely wanted to be the worst because I was so sick of everyone fighting to be the best.
The only truths worth arguing about are those truths that could prevent or lead to circumstances that may bite us in the rear sooner or later.
If one should criticize one should always have a meaningful explanation to accompany.
The actual confident man, the man truly sure of himself, is not he who esteems himself higher than others, but he who is sure enough that he can bear to esteem others higher than himself.
Mankind, in all his lusts, punishes himself. The gods have to do very little.
Where neither go wrong, the naive only see the world as a victim of bad doctrine; the cynic only sees good doctrine as a victim of the world.
The older you get, the more you understand how your conscience works. The biggest and only critic lives in your perception of people’s perception of you rather than people’s perception of you.
Confidence turns into pride only when you are in denial of your mistakes.
My confidence is in the idea that I may be wrong on this or that. No man in this life should ever have to bear the burden of perfection.
It is a noble responsibility to not back down when you know that you know that you know that you are right.
The pressure of adversity is the most powerful sustainer of accountability. It’s as though everything you do is multiplied by 50 in order to surpass those with a head-start. I was never capable of slacking when at the threshold of failure.
Assuming what people want is about as controlled as using fireworks to start a fire.
The man who sins but wants to purify it is no more a sinner than the man who doesn’t sin but wants to sin.
It’s okay to be honest about not knowing rather than spreading falsehood. While it is often said that honesty is the best policy, silence is the second best policy.
Some people’s theologies come across as blatantly wrong when weighed against what is revealed in Scripture. However God has mercy on those who may be wrong but genuinely seek understanding before seeking themselves.
We live in an age so legalistic, we find it hard to imagine someone wanting to obey their Lord simply because they love their God.
The conscious attempt to be a good person without Christ is as legalistic as an attempt to make it into Heaven through empty religiosity.
The worst evil is that most subtle evil. It is the evil that is merely ‘base’ which is more evil than evil itself. For it is the one closest to righteousness, the one indistinguishable and doused in virtue.
They call good evil and evil good. There are those who are so easily offended that they lose their ability to ever discern any truth, and this is often derived from a sort of frenzy by way of their own masked prejudice.
The pride of man hopes but to blame God for the evils of the world, and to praise himself for the good.
Misguided good men are more dangerous than honest bad men. It is because they are seen as good that, in and by good conscience, the mob will always, stubbornly back them without question.
Goodness is sparked by a caution for the sake of what is good, not a fear of what is bad.
As time moves on the line will blur. It will no longer seem to be the simplicity of good versus evil, but good versus fools who think they are good.
Everything at some point has been declared the root of all evil.
Self-awareness – the commendable ability to be yourself without being a nuisance to someone else.
A distaste for the new is not always fear of the unknown, but sometimes ambition. Some people don’t like the new way simply because they never got a chance to master the old way.
On the inside, the copycats of the ruffians are more delicate than the copycats of prudes.
Tolerance never exists without negative judgment. It is the sentiment of having a negative opinion about something yet still putting up with it.
Feel what it’s like to truly starve, and I guarantee that you’ll forever think twice before wasting food.
Great philosophers become immortal – they make undeniable impacts on culture.
Nothing frustrates people more than a cocky guy who’s still winning.
Sure, some of us humans might be angry at a sovereign God about Hell, but know that that is about as meaningful as a few germs being angry at humans about bleach.
Whatever thing a man gets quickly enraged about is his idol, and whatever thing he makes his idol becomes his religion.
When making a point, there are 2 types of people who may disagree with you: those who can support their reasons, and the childish ones who are too worried about being told what to do.
Intelligent people, as some say, in their openness, are indeed slow to criticize, but conversely, in their openness to the concerns of others, the genuine are slow to fret about being criticized.
The hated man is the result of his hater’s pride rather than his hater’s conscience.
For what religion has never had sects? Rest assured, Extremism is always the derrière.
The eye of danger and the face of fear are what really pull off a person’s mask.
What good is there in being blind, you ask? Well, maybe it’s to see the beauty on the inside without being vainly distracted, or superficially blinded, by the ugly on the outside.
The most mesmerizing of artists is always like one who was merely drawing in the sand and people came to watch.
To be truly positive in the eyes of some, you have to risk appearing negative in the eyes of others.
Being nice merely to be liked in return nullifies the point.
Even if there are instances in which it can be mistook by onlookers, never fool yourself into using misunderstood genius as an excuse to be a fool.
Maturity is when you’re able to say, ‘It’s not just them. It’s me.
The vanity of intelligence is that the intelligent man is often more committed to ‘one-upping’ his opponent than being truthful. When the idea of intelligence, rather than intelligence itself, becomes a staple, there is no wisdom in it.
When disinformation is running rampant, there are two ignorances that may emerge: the one is actually positive, a sort of pure and intentional emptying of the mind; but the other is of course negative and clogged and polluted.
The disruption of science is one which abandons the method and seeks to conquer grounds outside its territory. It is not at all religion but this pseudo-science that is the enemy of science.
The thing about stereotyping is it’s usually just throwing rocks into a crowd hoping to hit somebody who deserves it.
It is never just disagreement but always intellectual dishonesty that is the apologist’s worst enemy. And its apprentice is ignorance.
Just because something isn’t a lie does not mean that it isn’t deceptive. A liar knows that he is a liar, but one who speaks mere portions of truth in order to deceive is a craftsman of destruction.
The only thing more frustrating than slanderers is those foolish enough to listen to them.
With enough mental gymnastics, just about any fact can become misshapen in favor to one’s confirmation bias.
It is not so much freedom of speech but the right to truth that great men protect.
God gives His deepest discernment and sharpest marksmanship to men who aim to expose His truth before an enemy’s lies.
I still believe that many Americans have a deep longing for that glorious moment when a sermon is more Biblical than American.
One of the Christian’s biggest fears is appearing ‘too Christian’. God forbid, because that’s often characterized as god-awful! We want to be one, but without being ‘one of them’.
A man who loves others based solely on how they make him feel, or what they do for him, is really not loving others at all – but loving only himself.
Today’s zealots are mostly those pretending to be anti-religious.
There is nothing new under the sun but that of the Son. Man’s rebellion against God has always been because he would rather fall in pride than rise in humility.
If you assume that the new – and simply because it’s new – is always to be better than the old, chances are you’ve never known anything valuable.
Generally, there is a lot of truth value in stepping back, observing, then logically generalizing the extremes of what you see.
God’s judgment is not like man’s judgment. It is not a suspension of His Love but an extension of His Love. His justice is always righteous, so His judgment is always Love.
Nothing amuses people more than a cocky guy who starts losing.
An over-indulgence of anything, even something as pure as water, can intoxicate.
God is so omnipotent yet man so impotent, the Divine masterpiece was not even in creating the universe, but in making sin boring to sinners.
One is not necessarily made self-centered because he is foolish, but one is very often made foolish because he is self-centered.
The more we love God, the more unpleasant sin becomes.
Humility is, in a sense, admitting how egotistical you are.
Great artists are a little too gifted to be bound by boxes and labels, and in saying that, the label ‘artist’ is to be used lightly.
The height of cleverness is in one’s ability to be very clever without seeming clever at all.
Showing a lack of self-control is in the same vein granting authority to others: ‘Perhaps I need someone else to control me.
If you don’t like the solution, change the problem.
Seeing the glass as half empty is more positive than seeing it as half full. Through such a lens the only choice is to pour more. That is righteous pessimism.
To be extremely happy but extremely intelligent is a task of being optimistic without being cheesy.
When I look at a person, I see a person – not a rank, not a class, not a title.
The eye of true equality often seems to have some degree of disrespect for the supposedly accomplished, privileged high and lofty to the supposedly accomplished, privileged high and lofty, although in reality, it’s simply irrespectiveness.
We are to give (and take) true love without falling into the narcissistic habit of only trying to take it in.
If I love a dose of (good) theology or philosophy, I probably also love discipline, improvement, wisdom, and challenges. If I hate it, I am probably too comfortable and proud to try to question myself.
Love does not dwell on how much one receives in return. If there is ever any balance in love, it is in a contest of who can love who more.
A god who gave us everything we wanted would be the most malevolent god of all. With an infantile curiosity, we insist on tasting the cockroach on the floor while our father is preparing a magnificent feast for us.
Tolerance is not infinite patience, but slain patience; patience that has lost its hope and love and has thrown in the towel.
If we all knew who God really was and what he really wanted for each and every one of us, we would all know that only a fool could really deny him.
Walk and loveWe’re walking in loveFor the walk of love
A man who goes into a restaurant and blatantly disrespects the servers shows a strong discontent with his own being. Deep down he knows that restaurant service is the closest thing he will ever experience to being served like a king.
I think that most artists scorned would prefer to be known as the one with the genius brain risking no career over the one with the good brain and great career.
Oftentimes winning can become an addiction, whether good or bad, to the point where you would rather lose it all before you lose at all.
The only honorable, desirable kind of fear that shouldn’t be feared is the fear of harm on a loved one. It’s the kind of fear that leads to self-sacrifice and the kind of fear where you would truly jump in front of a bus to save another.
The man who is most aggressive in teaching tolerance is the most intolerant of all: he wants a world full of people too timid and ashamed to really disagree with anything.
Sometimes you feel as though you’ve slandered yourself, but the joke’s on them.
The first reaction is surely the most natural one, but not always the most correct one; thereupon, the invention of apologies.
I appreciate a book intended to be judged by its cover. The insincere readers are often weeded out while the sincere readers remain curious.
Some things are so silly they have a certain brilliance to them. Other things, set as standards for brilliance and therefore exalted by many who don’t know why, become tarnished because of it.
Comedy to me has always seemed a social tightrope for the comedian. For all axioms intellectually sound the general public would prefer to be amused, but in those emotionally sound, it then chooses to get offended.
I am a fan of overdoing something, but not running it into the ground. They are complete opposites with only a fine line separating them.
Narcissists often feign oppression because narcissists always feel entitled.
Trying to be offensive for the sole purpose of being offensive should always deem one the least offensive of offenders.
The fans are always more radical than that which they are fans.
It’s always funny that you can try and try again to steal all your critics’ ammo, predict their responses, but no matter what, they’ll still have a water gun stashed somewhere.
Any fool can do something cool and look cool, but it takes skill to make something uncool cool again.
When focusing only on one’s credentials one boasts his own incompetence in his capacity for discernment of the individual.
Drinking is such a necessity to human life that people cannot fathom an individual who, like a child confined to a church pew, gets little enjoyment out of it and would rather do other things.
An insincere critic of a sincere person never wins.
By(e) pen, I’ve tried my hand at poetry; only to see how boring it is to me. That is, unless I get a chance to destroy each and every piece while doing it as I please.
Extreme right-wingers are known for giving God a bad name; extreme left-wingers are known for giving God a weak name. He’s not as simple as conservative versus liberal, old versus new. His wings are balanced. God is both and neither.
What is a genius? A person who demands little to nothing from others, but is often found extremely difficult to have around.
Discernment is the son of good judgment and the father of self-control. When mixed with an already clear conscience, the ability to read the true motives of a critic keeps one’s conscience both clear and at ease.
A solid answer to everything is not necessary. Blurry concepts influence one to focus, but postulated clarity influences arrogance.
Even when the truth is in fact simple, simplicity is still relative.
Chance is your godThough you’re falling free you will land hard
When you’re truly awesome, you know that it’s actually a burden and wish day after day to be relieved of such a curse. Think of about 95% of the superheroes.
You get hit the hardest when trying to run or hide from a problem. Like the defense on a football field, putting all focus on evading only one defender is asking to be blindsided.
That most pleasant weather to feel is the one never felt.