Quotes About Community

As these anecdotes illustrate, ritual refers to two kinds of acts: those things we do for the first time that, in fact, have been done by the human race again and again forever—and those patterns that we ourselves repeat again and again because they bring structure and meaning to our individual and collective lives.

You know, without realizing it we fill important places in each other's lives.

And give money to all street musicians.

Criminals strike close to home just as the average person chooses stores where he shops daily.

San Francisco seems to be the last sanctuary for the rootless in its tolerance for every form of lifestyle.

Religion is the great balm of existence because it takes us outside ourselves, connects us to something larger

Madness is the exception in individuals but the rule in groups. —Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)

In the kingdom of God, barking orders at others is not an acceptable way to try to solve problems created by our inadequacies.

In every culture the total word of God has to be declared to us by another. In every culture the message of the gospel is in constant danger of being compromised by the value system that supports that culture and its goals. The stranger to that culture can instinctively identify those points of surrender and call the community back to a purer and more authentic faith. But such infusions of new life are usually resented and resisted.

Villagers all, this frosty tide, Let your doors swing open wide, Though wind may follow, and snow beside, Yet draw us in by your fire to bide; Joy shall be yours in the morning!

The Wild Wood is pretty well populated by now; with all the usual lot, good, bad, and indifferent—I name no names.

Animals arrived, liked the look of the place, took up their quarters, settled down, spread, and flourished. They didn't bother themselves about the past--they never do; they're too busy...And they don't bother about the future, either--the future when perhaps the people will move in again--for a time--as may very well be. The Wild Wood is pretty well populated by now; with all the usual lot, good, bad, and indifferent--I name no names. It takes all sorts to make a world.

The Wild Wood is pretty well populated by now; with all the usual lot, good, bad, and indifferent - I name no names. It takes all sorts to make a world

I was excited by what my painter friends were doing, and they seemed to be interested in our poetry too, and that was a wonderful little, fizzy sort of world.

I wouldn't care to shoot my own townsmen over a difference of opinion about politics. Keep 'em yourself if you think you need 'em; but I suggest you'll be better off to put 'em away where you can't get at 'em. The trouble with a pistol is that if you show it, you've got to use it, and once you use it you've committed yourself.

A community is an informally constituted group, larger than the family, within which there is a distinctive pattern of interaction, whose members share a feeling of common identity which may be no more than a simple recognition of friendship, and which possesses its own sub-culture, defining how the members of the community should conduct themselves and behave towards one another during their free time.

Addie and Louis sat down in front. She had arranged the funeral and told the minister about Ruth. He hadn't known her at all. She had stopped going to any church because of her feeling about orthodoxy and the childish ways in which churches talked and thought about God.

They don't come to church on Sunday morning to think about new ideas or even the old important ones. They want to hear what they've been told before, with only some small variation on what they've been hearing all their lives, and then they want to go home and eat pot roast and say it was a good service and feel satisfied. But

I heard he was disciplined by the church for supporting some other preacher who came out homosexual in Denver. I believe it was something of that nature.

One final note: in this book I say "we" a lot. No matter who you are, you will probably encounter at least one "we" to which your reaction is "not me." And maybe that's true. But that reaction illustrates a theme of the book, which is that the basic American struggle is over who is an insider and who an outsider—who comes within the most fundamental "we": We the People.

Networking is one letter away from not working

Change Tactic: Bad habits are almost always a social disease—if those around us model and encourage them, we'll almost always fall prey.

Change Tactic: Bad habits are almost always a social disease—if those around us model and encourage them, we'll almost always fall prey. Turn "accomplices" into "friends" and you can be two-thirds more likely to succeed.

Laughter heals all wounds, and that's one thing that everybody shares. No matter what you're going through, it makes you forget about your problems. I think the world should keep laughing.