Ignorant Historian

“All the questions I have given you are very important,” he said.  ”But the most important question you can ask is, ‘Where is Jesus in your theory?’ ” – quoted in Green Like God by Jonathan Merritt, p. 83

“You held out your arms, I walked away / Insolent, I spurned your face / Squandering the gifts you gave to me / and holding close forbidden things” – “The Prodigal,” Sovereign Grace music

“Most Americans don’t hate the environment.  They don’t start forest fires to watch them burn or refuse to carpool because they think the sky looks prettier with a sooty grey hue.  They just think they have more important things to do.” – Green Like God by Jonathan Merritt, p. 50

“I do know my own mind,” protested Anne.  ”The trouble is my mind changes and I have to get acquainted with it all over again.” – Anne of the Island by Lucy Maud Montgomery

“[C]hurchmen who look at God, so to speak, through the wrong end of the telescope, so reducing him to pigmy proportions, cannot hope to end up as more than pigmy Christians, and clear-sighted people naturally want something better than this.” – Knowing God by J. I. Packer

“My tendency to pursue more and better is impossible to reconcile with the divine plan.” – Green Like God by Jonathan Merritt, p. 133

“You’re not racing?” the officer asked, chaffing him.
“My race is a harder one, ” Alexey Alexandrovitch responded deferentially.
And though the answer meant nothing, the general looked as though he had heard a witty remark from a witty man, and fully relished la pointe de la sauce.
-Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“I want to write, but more than that, I want to bring out all kinds of things that lie buried deep in my heart.  There is a saying that “paper is more patient than man;” it came back to me on one of my slightly melancholy days, while I sat chin in hand, feeling too bored and limp even to make up my mind whether to go out or stay at home.” – Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl

“Overconsumption of energy, and virtually every resource imaginable, has become ‘the American way of life.’  What’s worse is that Americans are the only ones who don’t seem to realize it.” – Green Like God by Jonathan Merritt, p. 117

“But do you know, they interest me more than blind conformity to tradition–somebody else’s tradition–that I see among our own friends.  It seems stupid to have discovered America only to make it into a copy of another country.” – Ellen Olenska, Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

“While entertaining is having guests with everything prepared and served correctly, hospitality is having people feel comfortable in my home and happy to be there no matter what we are doing or eating.” – Laurie Twibell, Practicing Hospitality, p. 64

“A little knowledge of God is worth more than a great deal of knowledge about him.” – Knowing God by J. I. Packer