Quotes About Engagement

When a church ceases to have a heart and ministry for its community, it is on the path toward death.

you have not been / paying attention

Never be entirely idle; but either be reading, or writing, or praying, or meditating, or endeavoring something for the public good.

Job: "The life of man upon earth is a warfare.

I should note that when Tom Reingold was at Bell Labs, he not only called and congratulated the submitter of every 1,000th request, he took them to lunch and used it as an opportunity to ask them how they would like to see service improved.

Those who are more adapted to the active life can prepare themselves for contemplation in the practice of the active life, while those who are more adapted to the contemplative life can take upon themselves the works of the active life so as to become yet more apt for contemplation.

Reading...is a full-contact sport; we crash up against the wave of words with all of our intellectual, imaginative, and emotional resources.

Reading is an activity of the imagination, and the imagination in question is not the writer's alone.

Our grand business undoubtedly is, not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.

Do the duty which lieth nearest to thee! Thy second duty will already have become clearer.

We were wise indeed, could we discern truly the signs of our own time; and by knowledge of its wants and advantages, wisely adjust our own position in it. Let us, instead of gazing wildly into the obscure distance, look calmly around us, for a little, on the perplexed scene where we stand.

Our main business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.

The best effect of any book is that it excites the reader to self activity.

at no time in my life have I been a person to hold myself polluted by the touch or approach of any creature that wore a human shape: on the contrary, from my very earliest youth it has been my pride to converse familiarly, more Socratico, with all human beings, man, woman, and child, that chance might fling my way; a practice …. which becomes a man who would be a philosopher.

Protest is good; involvement is better; doing both is the best.

To look in the eyes of audiences and see the kind of naughty glee that they got with being on the inside, the audience becomes your co-conspirators.

You can be a bit more naughty with a live show.

Al Qaeda attacked the U.S.S. Cole and bombed several U.S. embassies in East Africa in the late 1990s. We knew who did it, but we didn't go after them. Instead, we beefed up security at our embassies and changed the Navy's rules of engagement. It only served to embolden Al Qaeda.

As a writer, you have to be near people and hear stuff. I'm a hamburger and cheese kind of fellow; I'm not Henry David Thoreau.

Pickett's lines being nearer, the impact was heaviest upon them.

Nearly everything you do is of no importance, but it is important that you do it.

I don't think there's nearly enough interesting ways to do education online, particularly for younger children.

When I entertain, I want to have fun. But I'm also a control person. I don't go in for those everyone-in-the-kitchen cooking scenes. So if I want to be with my guests, I have to do everything - or nearly everything - in advance.

I used to get an awful lot of letters, and they have almost all gone. I used to answer nearly all of them.