Quotes About Acceptance

Welcome with open arms fellow believers who don't see things the way you do. And don't jump all over them every time they do or say something you don't agree with—even when it seems that they are strong on opinions but weak in the faith department. Remember, they have their own history to deal with. Treat them gently.

The chosen ones of God were those who let God pursue his interest in them, and as a result received his stamp of legitimacy.

Now that we know what we have—Jesus, this great High Priest with ready access to God—let's not let it slip through our fingers. We don't have a priest who is out of touch with our reality. He's been through weakness and testing, experienced it all—all but the sin. So let's walk right up to him and get what he is so ready to give. Take the mercy, accept the help.

Congregation is composed of people, who, upon entering a church, leave behind what people on the street name or call them.

The terrible threat against life, he said in his book God Is Not Yet Dead, is not death, nor pain, nor any variation on the disasters that we so obsessively try to protect ourselves against with our social systems and personal stratagems. The terrible threat is "that we might die earlier than we really do die, before death has become a natural necessity. The real horror lies in just such a premature death, a death after which we go on living for many years."6

The terrible threat is "that we might die earlier than we really do die, before death has become a natural necessity. The real horror lies in just such a premature death, a death after which we go on living for many years.

I'll call nobodies and make them somebodies; I'll call the unloved and make them beloved. In the place where they yelled out, 'You're nobody!' they're calling you 'God's living children.

re: Matthew 4) " 'Give in for now': what a strange thing for Jesus to say to a steadfast and protesting prophet; and yet what a comforting thing for those of us who cannot live in fiercely absolute ways. ... Jesus the Lord enters our life as it is and calls us not away but more deeply into it.

It was a great mistake, my being born a man, I would have been much more successful as a seagull or a fish. As it is, I will always be a stranger who never feels at home, who does not really want and is not really wanted, who can never belong, who must be a little in love with death!

The past is the present, isn't it? It's the future, too. We all try to lie out of that but life won't let us.

We are such things as rubbish is made of, so let's drink up and forget it.

people—that is, my tolerance for imperfection—expanded.

Not infrequently over the course of our marriage we'd talked about how each of us—or anyone, for that matter—needed to develop the inner strength necessary to face his or her own death. Not to pay lip service to the concept but really attempt to work at it. People neglected to do so at their peril.

What is true is already so. Owning up to it doesn't make it worse. Not being open about it doesn't make it go away. And because it's true, it is what is there to be interacted with. Anything untrue isn't there to be lived. People can stand what is true, for they are already enduring it.

How are things going?" "Oh, I can't complain…" The greatest complaint of all.

The logic of pessimism moves through three refusals: a no-saying to the worst (refusal of the world-for-us, or Schopenhauer's tears); a yes-saying to the worst (refusal of the world-in-itself, or Nietzsche's laughter); and a no-saying to the for-us and the in-itself (a double refusal, or Cioran's sleep). Crying, laughing, sleeping — what other responses are adequate to a life that is so indifferent?

Afraid to be content. Content to be sad.

How are you?" "Good–" "Give it time…

Bartleby's paradox: acceptance through refusal.

One senses that for Schopenhauer, the world does exist, and it's horrible, and there's not much one can do about it.

It was pointless to worry about problems I didn't yet have.

if someone has just hurt you or broken your heart, if someone has just died, all the grace you need is there-waiting for you to receive it. As long as we are pulled inward-despair and self attention, we aren't free to reach for God's grace. If we mean to leave ourselves alone, we must keep a hand free.

Las putas nunca debieron irse de aquella casa. El primero y el segundo oficio más viejos del mundo deberían estar juntos. Al fin y al cabo, entre el nacimiento de uno y otro sólo mediaron unas horas. El primero surgió para que cualquiera pudiera satisfacer las exigencias del amor; el segundo, para que nadie intentara satisfacer por su cuenta las exigencias del odio».

Mother: "He made me feel like I wasn't really a writer if I wasn't published. It was as if my poetry didn't mean anything unless it was accepted by someone else." After