Wise Words

Some words to inspire and challenge you, as they have done for us.

The Core Desires of a Man’s Heart:

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.
Thoreau

It seems to me that people have vast potential. Most people can do extraordinary things if they have the confidence or take the risks. Yet most people don’t. They sit in front of the TV and treat life as if it goes on forever.
Philip Adams

Men have become the tools of their tools.
Thoreau

The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; It has been found difficult and left untried.
G.K. Chesterton

When you reach the thing you were desiring, if it doesn’t satisfy you, it was not what you were desiring.
C.S. Lewis

You can not discover new oceans until you have the courage to lose sight of the shoreline.
Anonymous

Truth must necessarily be stranger than fiction, for fiction is the creation of the human mind and therefore congenial to it.
G.K. Chesterton

Most people dread finding out when they come to die that they have never really lived.
Thoreau

Narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.
Jesus of Nazareth

…Still round the corner there may wait, A new road or a secret gate.
J.R.R. Tolkien

Life is not a problem to be solved, it is an adventure to be lived.
John Eldredge

The tragedy of life is what dies inside a man while he yet lives.
Albert Schweitzer

As water reflects a face, so a man’s heart reflects the man.
Solomon

Life is either a daring adventure or it is nothing at all.
Helen Keller

All men die, few men ever really live.
William Wallace

It is never too late to become what you were always meant to be.
Anonymous

The glory of God is a man fully alive.
St. Irenaeus

It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.
G.K. Chesterton

Freedom has a scent… like the top of a newborn baby’s head.
BonoU2

We must reawaken and learn to remain awake, not by mechanical aid, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn.
Thoreau

Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take but by the moments that take our breath away.
Author Unknown

You, my brothers, were called to be FREE.
Paul the Apostle

I am almost committing an indecency. I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you… the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like “Nostalgia” and “Romanticism”.
C.S. Lewis

For every thousand hacking at the leaves of evil, there is one striking at the root.
Thoreau

The Larger Story

The Gospel is a fairy tale with, of course, one crucial difference from all other fairy tales… That it is true, and that it not only happened once upon a time but has kept on happening ever since and is happening still.
Frederick Buechner

I have found a desire within myself that no experience in this world can satisfy; the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.
C.S. Lewis

Life has its own hidden forces which you can only discover by living.
Kierkegaard

And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.
Nietzsche

What happens next? I dare you to move… Like today never happened before.
Switchfoot

Ours is a world of magic and mystery, of deep darkness and flickering starlight. It is a world where terrible things happen and wonderful things too. It is a world where goodness is pitted against evil, love against hate, order against chaos, in a great struggle where often it is hard to be sure who belongs to which side because appearances are endlessly deceptive.
Frederick Buechner

Money is not required to buy one necessity of the soul.
Thoreau

Enemy occupied territory… that is what the world is. Christianity is the story of how the rightful King has landed in disguise, and is calling us all to take part in a great campaign of sabotage.
C.S. Lewis

…the kingdom of God has been forcefully advancing and violent men lay hold of it.
Jesus of Nazareth

Safe? Who said anything about safe. ‘Course He isn’t safe. But He’s good.
C.S. Lewis

The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt within the heart.
Helen Keller

A mind that is stretched by new experience can never go back to its old dimensions.
Oliver Wendell Holmes

Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die. ‘He that will lose his life, the same shall have it,’ is not a piece of mysticism for saints and heroes, it is a piece of every day advice… He must seek his life in a spirit of furious indifference to it; He must desire life like water and yet drink death like wine.
G.K. Chesterton

Maybe redemption has stories to tell. Maybe forgiveness is right where you fell. Where can you run to escape from yourself. Where you gonna go? Salvation is here!
Switchfoot

I submit to you that if a man hasn’t discovered something he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.
Martin Luther King Jr.

The grace of God means something like: Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn’t have been complete without you. Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid. I am with you. Nothing can ever separate us. It’s for you I created the universe. I love you. There’s only one catch… Like any other gift, the gift of grace can be yours only if you’ll reach out and take it.
Frederick Buechner

There are risks and costs to a program of action. But they are far less than the long-range risks and costs of comfortable inaction.
John F. Kennedy

If you don’t risk anything, you risk even more.
Erica Jong

I submit to you that if a man hasn’t discovered something he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.
Martin Luther King Jr.

The Poser:

When a man takes one step toward God, God takes more steps toward that man than there are sands in the worlds of time.
The Work of the Chariot

You’ve got to do your own growing, no matter how tall your grandfather was.
Irish Proverb

Posing is the weak man’s imitation of strength.
Anonymous

Our lives improve only when we take chances and the first and most difficult risk we can take is to be honest with ourselves.
Walter Anderson

All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.
J.R.R. Tolkien

It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.
Andre Gide

Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold.
Leo Tolstoy

If how things LOOK is what matters, how things ARE will never matter or be dealt with.
Anonymous

No man, for any considerable period of time, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the truth.
Nathanial Hawthorne

“Esse quam videri” (To be, rather than to appear)
Anonymous

The Wound:

What is usually called resignation is actually confirmed desperation.
Thoreau

In war, there are no unwounded soldiers.
Jose Narosky

And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
Anais Nin

Love is everything it’s cracked up to be… It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for.
Erica Jong

God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.
C.S. Lewis

To forgive is to set the prisoner free, and then discover the prisoner was you.
Anonymous

Nothing worth having comes without some kind of fight.
Bruce Cockburn

The story of your life is the story of the journey of your heart through a dangerous and beautiful world. It is the story of the long and sustained assault on your heart by the Enemy who knows who you could be and fears you.
John Eldredge

I am afflicted and needy, And my heart is wounded within me.
King David

Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens.
J.R.R. Tolkien

The purposes of a man’s heart are deep waters, but a man of understanding draws them out.
Solomon

To be courageous does not mean that you are not afraid. It means that fear doesn’t win by changing your course.
Nicole Johnson

But You, O God, do see our trouble and grief. You are the helper of the fatherless.
King David

Because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, “Father! Father!”
Paul the Apostle

Your New Name:

Our problem is not that we desire too much, but that we desire too little.
C.S. Lewis

Desperado, why don’t you come to your senses. You been out riding fences for so long now. O you’re a hard one, but I know That you got your reasons… You better let somebody love before it’s too late.
The Eagles

Now with God’s help I shall become myself.
Kierkegaard

God is the author and creator of our lives. He has written our life to reveal His story.
Dan Allender

The world will see your righteousness, and all kings your glory; you will be called by a new name that the mouth of the Lord will bestow.
God

God has paid us the intolerable compliment of loving us too much.
C.S. Lewis

I will go before you and will level the mountains; I will break down the gates of bronze and cut through bars of iron. I will give you the treasures of darkness, riches stored in secret places, So that you may know that I am the Lord, Who summons you by Name.
God

Everybody sees how you seem, But only a few know who you are.
Anonymous

A good name is more desirable than great riches…
King Solomon

Who can give a man this, his own name? God alone. For no one but God sees what the man is.
George MacDonald

Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine. I summon you by name and bestow on you a title of honor.
God

Before I was born the Lord called me; from my birth he has made mention of my name.
Isaiah

When your words came, they were my joy and my heart’s delight, for I bear your name, O Lord God Almighty.
Jeremiah

For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name.
Paul the Apostle

Our world, even with all its confusion and wildness, is a world where the battle goes ultimately to the good, who live happily ever after… and where in the long run everybody, good and evil alike, becomes known by his true name.
Frederick Buechner

To him who overcomes… I will also give him a white stone with a new name written on it, known only to him who receives it.
Jesus

The Enemy:

The Greatest trick the devil ever pulled, was convincing the world he didn’t exist.
Verbal Kint

The devil sleepeth not… therefore cease not to prepare thyself for the battle, for on thy right hand and on thy left hand are enemies who never rest.
Thomas a’Kempis

A dead thing goes with the stream. Only a living thing can go against it.
G.K. Chesterton

Praise be to the LORD my Rock, who trains my hands for war, my fingers for battle.
King David

They will be like mighty warriors in battle, trampling their enemies in the mud under their feet. Since the LORD is with them as they fight, they will overthrow even the horsemen of the enemy.
God

I think of a hero as someone who understands the degree of responsibility that comes with his freedom.
Bob Dylan

It’s a dangerous business… going out your front door.
J.R.R. Tolkien

Cowards falter, but danger is often overcome by those who nobly dare.
Queen Elizabeth I

Courage is being scared spitless - but saddling up anyway.
John Wayne

A hero is a man who is afraid to run away.
English Proverb

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
Edmund Burke

Fate has chosen them. Evil will hunt them. A fellowship will protect them.
Fellowship of the Ring

This is where we are now in the midst of battle without the training we really need, and there are few men around to show us how to do it.
John Eldredge

You must be the leader of your own personal resistance to tyranny.
Anonymous

Families sleep peacefully in their beds at night because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.
George Orwell

Your Calling:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly.
Theodore Roosevelt

Courage is fear that has said its prayers.
Dorothy Bernard

An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered.
G.K. Chesterton

I believe in God like I believe in the sun, not because I can see it, but because of it, all things are seen.
C.S. Lewis

Your deeds will not be less valiant because they are unpraised.
J.R.R. Tolkien

“The Religious Man” is a popular story option in which we try to reduce the wildness of life by constructing a system of promises and rewards… a contract that will obligate God to grant us exemption from our Wounds.
John Eldredge

I run in the path of your commands, for you have set my heart free.
King David

There never has been nor will there be another life like mine on the earth. Just as there is only one face and name like mine, so there is only one story like mine. And the story of my life is written to make something known about the God who wrote me.
Dan Allender

The hero is commonly the simplest and obscurest of men.
Thoreau

“A noble hart may hae nae ease, gif freedom failye”

(”A noble heart may have no ease if freedom fail”)
Anonymous

Don’t ask what the world needs, ask what makes you come alive. Because what the world needs are men who have come fully alive.
Anonymous

The last temptation that’s the greatest treason is to do the right thing for the wrong reasons.
T.S. Eliot

The place where God calls you is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.
Frederick Buechner

God gives a man a vision, then He takes him down into the valley to batter him into the shape of that vision.
Oswald Chambers.

We live in an age of great events and little men.
Churchill

The hero is one who kindles a great light in the world, who sets up blazing torches in the dark streets of life for men to see.
Felix Alder

Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.
Jesus Christ

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.
Martin Luther King Jr.

Band of Brothers:

A man who is going nowhere can have no fellow travelers.
C.S Lewis

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed it is the only thing that ever has.
Margaret Mead

We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.
Martin Luther King Jr.

All of you, live in harmony with one another; be sympathetic, love as brothers, be compassionate and humble.
Apostle Peter

Help thy brother’s boat across, and lo! thine own has reached the shore.
Indian Proverb

Whatever comes out of these gates, we have a better chance of survival if we work together… If we stay together, we survive.
Maximus

They charge like warriors; they scale walls like soldiers. They all march in line, not swerving from their course. They do not jostle each other; each marches straight ahead. They plunge through defenses without breaking ranks.
Joel the Prophet

You’re a special group. You’ve found in one another a bond, that exists only in combat, among brothers.
General Liebgott

Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another above yourselves.
Apostle Paul

Endure hardship with us like a good soldier of Christ Jesus.
Timothy

Lt. George Rice: Looks like you guys are going to be surrounded.
Col. Dick Winters: We’re soldiers, Lieutenant, we’re supposed to be surrounded.
Spielberg’s Band Of Brothers

The Beauty:

What a grand thing, to be loved! What a grander thing still, to love!
Victor Hugo

The question is not what you look at… but what you see.
Thoreau

Love is not blind it sees more, not less. But because it sees more, it is willing to see less.
Rabbi Julius Gordon

There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.
Sir Francis Bacon

To love deeply in one direction makes us more loving in all others.
Anne Sophie Swetchine

The first question I ask myself when something doesn’t seem to be beautiful is why do I think it’s not beautiful. And very shortly you discover that there is no reason.
John Cage

Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one… But in that casket safe, dark, motionless, airless it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.
C.S. Lewis

‘Tis the most tender part of love, each other to forgive.
John Sheffield

A successful marriage isn’t finding the right person, it is being the right person.
Anonymous

Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.
Bertrand Russell

Love cannot survive if you just give it scraps of yourself, scraps of your time, scraps of your thoughts.
Mary O’Hara

There is no remedy for love but to love more.
Thoreau

Love is an act of endless forgiveness, a tender look which becomes a habit.
Peter Ustinov

Love flies, runs, and rejoices; it is free and nothing can hold it back.
Thomas a’Kempis

She moves in mysterious ways…
U2

You have stolen my heart, my bride; You have stolen my heart with one glance of your eyes. Turn your eyes from me; they overwhelm me.
Song of Solomon

The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate handling. Yet we do not treat ourselves nor one another thus tenderly.
Thoreau

To love is to receive a glimpse of heaven.
Karen Sunde

How beautiful you are, my darling! Oh, how beautiful!
Song of Solomon

The pleasure of love is in loving.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Walking with God, Hearing His Voice:

Obey God in the things He shows you, and instantly the next thing is opened up. God will never reveal more truth about Himself until you have obeyed what you know already… this brings out the delight of real friendship with God.
Oswald Chambers

It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.
Paul the Apostle

Few things are as encouraging as the realization that things can be different and that we have a role in making them so.
Daniel Taylor

The Spiritual Life cannot be made suburban. It is always frontier, and we who live in it must accept and even rejoice that it remains untamed.
Howard Macy

I never knew how to worship until I knew how to love.
Henry Ward Beecher

Narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.
Jesus of Nazareth

There are many people who reach their conclusions about life like schoolboys: They cheat their master by copying the answer out of a book without having worked the sum out for themselves.
Kierkegaard

There is a time for departure even when you are not certain the place you are going to go.
Anonymous

For you, O Lord, have delivered my soul from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling, that I may walk before the Lord in the land of the living.
King David

The key to a successful attack is to lay down a good steady base of fire and advance under that fire. If done correctly, it gets the job done and saves lives. You can talk about it, you can go through dry run exercises, but you only get the feel of it with actual experience.
Major Dick Winters - Easy CompanyWWII

Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, “This is the way; walk in it.”
God

Where Do We Go From Here:

A coward turns away, but a brave man’s choice is danger.
Euripides

A man is never more a man than when he embraces an adventure beyond his control, or when he walks into a battle he isn’t sure of winning.
John Eldridge

Courage is contagious. When a brave man takes a stand, the spines of others are often stiffened.
Billy Graham

Truth must necessarily be stranger than fiction, for fiction is the creation of the human mind and therefore congenial to it.
G.K. Chesterton

What we do in this life echoes in eternity.
Maximus

Do not rejoice over me, O enemy. Though I fall I will rise; though I dwell in darkness, the Lord is a light for me.
Micah the Prophet

No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars or sailed an uncharted land, or opened a new doorway for the human spirit.
Helen Keller

You, my brothers, were called to be FREE.
Paul the Apostle

Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.
Theodore Roosevelt

You show that you are a letter from Christ, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.
Paul the Apostle

It is never too late to become what you were always meant to be.
Anonymous

And with each challenge faced, with each victory won, you suddenly come to the realization that you are a different person than the one who began the journey.
Author Unknown

Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us…that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumphs. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly. ‘Tis dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed, if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated.
Thomas Paine

This is not the end of the road; it’s the trailhead. What you are journeying toward is freedom, healing and authenticity
John Eldredge