Quotes About Devotion

Earthly comforts used with moderation, and as supports of our weakness, may be sanctified by a good intention; but whilst they bolster up our weakness, they keep it alive and strengthen it; and if they are sought after, or made use of with eagerness and attachment, immoderately or frequently, they strongly nourish self love and sensuality, and produce a distrust of the solid food of devotion and divine love.

Nothing can have so prevalent a power to still the agitation of passion in the breast, nothing is so fit to induce a smooth and easy flow, and a constant evenness of temper, as a frequent application to the throne of grace.

There is no piety in the world which is not the result of cultivation, and which cannot be increased by the degree of care and attention bestowed upon it.

I know of only one duty, and that is to love.

La vrai amour ce n'est pas de vivre avec une femme parce qu'on l'aime, mais de l'aimer parce qu'on vit avec elle.

To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms—this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of all true religiousness. In this sense, and in this sense only, I belong in the ranks of devoutly religious men.

True religion is real living living with all one's soul, with all one's goodness and righteousness.

To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull facilities can comprehend only in the most primitive forms--this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of true religiousness. In this sense, and in this sense only, I belong to the ranks of the devoutly religious men.

The art of love is largely the art of persistence.

This book is dedicated to my brilliant and beautiful wife without whom I would be nothing. She always comforts and consoles, never complains or interferes, asks nothing, and endures all. She also writes my dedications.

This dog, Robin Adair, was the joy of Eve's heart – or he had been, when her heart still could hold joy and not merely fever and delirium.

Humans had celebrated her recovery with presents, and he, watching, had imitated them. He had gone far and had toiled hard to bring her an offering that his canine mind deemed all-desirable.

When I think of the people who give their sons and everything they have, to the country, I feel ashamed of not being more willing to let a mere dog go. But then Bruce is not just a 'mere dog.' He is – he is Bruce.

Here comes Laddie," she said. "Robert was looking all over for him when he dipped the other dogs. He came and asked me if——" "Trust Lad to know when dipping-day comes around!" laughed the Master. "Unless you or I happen to be on hand, he always gives the men the slip. He—

And, by the time Lady was brought back, cured, the puppy had begun to show the results of his sire's stern teachings. Indeed, Lady's absence was the best thing that could have befallen Wolf. For, otherwise, his training must needs have devolved upon the Mistress and the Master. And no mere humans could have done the job with such grimly gentle thoroughness as did Lad.

Being only a dog, Lad had no way of knowing his vanished deities ever would come back to him. Pitifully he followed the Mistress upstairs and down and everywhere she moved, as she prepared for the departure. He refused to be consoled when she patted him and when she said she and the Master would be back in a few days. His classic head drooped. His plumed tail hung disconsolate. He was the picture of utter misery.

All of which went to confirm Lad in the natural belief that anything found on the road and brought to the Mistress would be looked on with joy and would earn him much gratitude. So,—as might a human in like circumstances,—he ceased to content himself with picking up trifles that chanced to be lying in his path, in the highway, and fell to searching for such flotsam and jetsam.

Nor did he smell any worse, even now, to these humans, than many humans had smelled to Lad's tormented senses, again and again, with their sickening perfumes and tobacco and booze! Lad had borne all that—though he loathed it—for the sake of being near those he loved. Yet when, through no desire of his own, he chanced to be malodorous, they ordered him from them in disgust!

Again and again the tobacco smell on the Master's breath and clothes had sickened the collie; so had the supposedly delicate perfumes used by the Mistress. Yet blithely had Lad endured these affronts to his tortured nostrils, in order to remain close beside these two humans who were his gods.

Sunnybank Gray Dawn outlived all the Little People I have spoken of—except Tippy—in this book. Dawn was the last of the great Sunnybank collies. He died on May 30, 1929, leaving bitter heartaches behind him. Peace to his white soul!)

To a dog, all men are gods. That does not mean they are his won particular gods or that he has any interest in most of them. But they are of the race which he and his ancestors have served and guarded and worshipped since the days when the new earth was covered with vapor and he Neanderthal man tamed the first wolf-cub.

Laund was oblivious to the fivefold punishment the very hint of which had hitherto been enough to send him ki-yi-ing under Danny's bed. He was not fighting for himself, but for the child who was at once his ward and his deity. On himself he was taking the torture that otherwise must have been inflicted on Danny. For perhaps the millionth time in the history of mankind and of dog, the Scriptural adage was fulfilled, and perfect love was casting out fear.

Would Man but deign to serve his God as they, Millennium must dawn within the year.

wished he might carry it into the enemies' own country. But his god was lying helpless at his feet and making queer sounds of distress. The dog's place was here. The joy of battle must be foregone.