Quote #98: on living in the end times

"Although the early church say the end of the world as imminent, why should we reenter that frame of mind, now that we know that the world was not about to end? Well, the New Testament invites us to see eternity as continually intersecting -- literally, cutting across -- time. This is a synchronic, not a diachronic, faith. We are created now, at every now. Christ comes now; the Incarnation is now. The great judgment is now. 'The accomplishment of everything impends' (1 Peter 4.7). Christ brought his reign with him. It is both present and to come."
--Garry Wills, The Rosary (Viking: 2005), pg. 20.

Danger to Liberty

"There is something so far-fetched and so extravagant in the idea of danger to liberty from the militia that one is at a loss whether to treat it with gravity or with raillery; whether to consider it as a mere trial of skill, like the paradoxes of rhetoricians; as a disingenuous artifice to instill prejudices at any price; or as the serious."

- Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 29

Advantage of being Armed

"Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of."
- James Madison, Federalist No. 46

Quote #95: on the powers of government

"A government ought to contain in itself every power requisite to the full accomplishment of the objects committed to its care, and to the complete execution of the trusts for which it is responsible, free from every other control but a regard to the public good and to the sense of the people."
- Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 31 (January 1, 1788).

Unalienable Rights

"The whole of that Bill [of Rights] is a declaration of the right of the people at large or considered as individuals... [It] establishes some rights of the individual as unalienable and which consequently, no majority has a right to deprive them of."

- Albert Gallatin, letter to Alexander Addison, 1789

Quote #93: on the purpose of government

"Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been and ever will be pursued until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit. In a society under the forms of which the stronger faction can readily unite and oppress the weaker, anarchy may as truly be said to reign as in a state of nature, where the weaker individual is not secured against the violence of the stronger; and as, in the latter state, even the individuals are prompted, by the uncertainty of their condition, to submit to a government which may protect the weak as well as themselves; so, in the former state, will the more powerful factions or parties be gradually induced, by a like motive to wish for a government which will protect all parties, the weaker as well as the more powerful."
- Alexander Hamilton (1757-1804), American founding father.

To Guard Liberty

"Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are inevitably ruined."

- Patrick Henry, Speech in the Virginia Ratifying Convention, 1778

The Right of Citizens to Be Armed

"Whereas, to preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them; nor does it follow from this, that all promiscuously must go into actual service on every occasion. The mind that aims at a select militia, must be influenced by a truly anti-republican principle; and when we see many men disposed to practice upon it, whenever they can prevail, no wonder true republicans are for carefully guarding against it."
- Federal Farmer, Antifederalist Letter, No. 18

Quote #90: St. Stephen

Since today is St. Stephen's Day, I thought it might be fitting to have a quote dedicated to the first believer to give up his life rather than renounce the Christian faith.  Here's the story of his martyrdom, as found in the Acts of the Apostles:

But he, being full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God, and said, "Look!  I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!"

Then they cried out with a loud voice, stopped their ears, and ran at  him with one accord;
and they cast him out of the city and stoned him.  And the witnesses laid down their clothes at the feet of a young man named Saul.

And they stoned Stephen as he was calling on God and saying, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit."  Then he knelt down and cried out with a loud voice, "Lord, do not charge them with this sin."  And when he had said this, he fell asleep.

Acts 7.54-60 (New King James Version).

Quote #89: "Love Came Down at Christmas"

Love came down at Christmas,
Love all lovely, Love Divine;
Love was born at Christmas,
Star and Angels gave the sign.

Worship we the Godhead,
Love Incarnate, Love Divine;
Worship we our Jesus:
But wherewith for sacred sign?

Love shall be our token,
Love shall be yours and love be mine,
Love to God and all men,
Love for plea and gift and sign.

 - Christina Rossetti (1830-1894), English poet.

4 short quotes

• Quote #85:  "Anxiety is the hand maiden of creativity." - T.S. Eliot (1888-1965), Anglo-American poet.

• Quote #86:  "Wisdom is oftentimes nearer when we stoop than when we soar." - William Wordsworth (1770-1850), English poet.

• Quote #87:  "A single conversation across the table with a wise man is better than ten years mere study of books." - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882), American author and linguist.

• Quote #88:  "Man is a mixture of good and evil, and he can never be perfected in this life. The notion of his natural goodness is a delusive theory which will blow up any social order that is predicated upon it." - Richard M. Weaver (1910-1963), scholar and rhetorical theorist.
  

Why George Washington was Great

"The great Searcher of human hearts is my witness, that I have no wish, which aspires beyond the humble and happy lot of living and dying a private citizen on my own farm."

- George Washington

Quote #83: on schadenfreude

"Do not rejoice at the fall of your enemy;
do not gloat when he is brought down,
or the Lord will be displeased at the sight,
and will cease to be angry with him."
- Proverbs 24.17-18 (Revised English Bible translation).

Quote #82: on the difficulty of discerning God's will

"Certainly there is no contending against the Will of God; but still there is some difficulty in ascertaining, and applying it, to particular cases." - Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865), 16th president of the United States.

Quote #81: on revenge

"Giving up our desire to take revenge is a hard sacrifice, perhaps the hardest, which Christ requires of us.  For our whole human nature cries out for vengence against our enemies.  The desire for revenge is stronger in our human blood than any other desire.  But - and we know it - we can no longer take revenge.  If my enemy stands there before my eyes, and I am overcome by the obsession to finally be able to take revenge, then Jesus Christ stands at once behind my enemy and entreats me:  do not lift up your hand, but leave vengence to me; I will take it."

- Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945), Christ's Love and Our Enemies (1938).

Quote #80: on beauty

"Beauty is indeed a good gift of God; but that the good may not think it a great good, God dispenses it even to the wicked." - St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430 A.D.).

The Cost of Freedom

"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigues of supporting it."
--Thomas Paine, The Crisis, No. 4, 1777

Quote #78: most people have their price

"Few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder." - George Washington (1732-1799), American founding father and first president of the United States.

"If the public are bound to yield obedience to laws to which they cannot give their approbation, they are slaves to those who make such laws and enforce them."

- Candidus in The Boston Gazette, 1772

Quote #76: on happiness

From an early Christian letter dating from the second century A.D.:

And once you love Him, you will be an imitator of His kindness. And you must not be surprised that man can become an imitator of God. He can, since He so wills. Certainly, to be happy does not mean to tyrannize over one's neighbors, or to wish to have an advantage ove rthe weaker ones, or to be rich and therefore able to use force against one's inferiors. It is not in such matters that one can imitate God; no, such amtters are foreign to His majesty. On the other hand, he who takes his neighbor's burden upon himself, who is willing to benefit his inferior in a matter in which he is his superior, who provides the needy with what he himself has received from God and thus becomes the god of the recipients -- he, I say, is an imitator of God!

- Epistle to Diognetus 10.4-6 (Ancient Christian Writers translation).

Quote #75: a marriage blessing

One of my favorite passages from one of my favorite plays:

Honor, riches, marriage blessing,
Long continuance, and increasing,
Hourly joys be stil upon you!
June sings her blessings on you.
Earth's increase, foison plenty,
Barns and garners never empty,
Vines with clust'ring bunches growing,
Plants with goodly burden bowing;
Spring come to you at the farthest
In the very end of harvest.
Scarcity and want shall shun you,
Ceres' blessing so is on you.

- William Shakespeare, from The Tempest, IV, i.

Quote #74: the meaning of Jesus' birth

"The birth of Jesus provides our entrance into the reality and meaning of creation: this is the world of the Father revealed by Jesus. Jesus shows us that the creation is something to be lived, not just looked at, and the way he did it becomes the way we do it."

- Eugene H. Peterson, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places (Eerdmans: 2005), pg. 137

"I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death."

- Thomas Paine, The American Crisis, No. 1, 1776

Quote #72: "the sacred had finally overspread the world."

A great Jewish scholar meditates on what the destruction of the Second Temple meant for Jewish practice in the world:

If we appreciate the force of powerful emotions aroused by the Temple cult, we may understand how grand a revolution was effected in the simple declaration, so long in coming, that with the destruction of the Temple the realm of the sacred had finally overspread the world. We must now see in ourselves, in our selfish motives to be immolated, the noblest sacrifice of all. So Rabban Gamaliel son of Rabbi Judah the Patriarch said, "Do His will as if it was your will, so that He may do your will as if it ws His will. Make your will of no effect before His will, that He may make the will of others of no effect before your will." His will is that we love our neighbors as ourselves. Just was willingly as we would contribute bricks and mortar for the building of a sanctuary, so willingly we ought to contribute love, renunciation, self-sacrifice, for the building of a sacred community. If one wants to do something for God in a time when the Temple is no more, the offering must be the gift of selfless compassion. The holy altar must be the streets and marketplaces of the world.

- Jacob Neuser, Judaism in the Beginning of Christianity (Fortress Press: 1984), pgs. 98-99.

Quote LXXI: On Education, The Consumation Of

"The start of learning, thus, lies in reading, but its consummation lies in meditation."

Hugh of St. Victor

Quote #70: on controling one's emotions

"Do not give in too much to feelings. A overly sensitive heart is an unhappy possession on this shaky earth."

- Goethe (1749-1832), German philosopher and writer.

Quote #69: on human improvement

"Beavers build houses; but they build them in nowise differently, or better now, than they did, five thousand years ago. Ants, and honey-bees, provide food for winter; but just in the same way they did, when Solomon referred the sluggard to them as patterns of prudence. Man is not the only animal who labors; but he is the only one who improves his workmanship."

- Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865), American statesman and president.

"No morn ever dawned more favorable than ours did; and no day was ever more clouded than the present! Wisdom and good examples are necessary at this time to rescue the political machine from the impending storm."

- George Washington, letter to James Madison, 1786

Quote #67: on the importance of tomorrow

"Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It's perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we've learned something from yesterday."

- John Wayne (1907-1979), American actor and cultural icon.

Quote #66: on justice and leadership

Sage advice from the pre-Christian Jewish tradition on the need for those charged with leadership in the community to seek both justice and holiness:

Love justice, you rulers of the earth; set your mind upon the Lord in the right way, and seek him in singleness of heart; for he is to be found by those who trust him without question, and he makes himself known to those who never doubt him. Dishonest thinking cuts people off from God, and if fools like liberties with his power he shows them up for what they are. Wisdom will not enter a shifty soul, nor make her home in a body that is mortgaged to sin. This holy spirit of discipline will shun falsehood; she cannot stay in the presence of unreason, and will withdraw at the approach of injustice.

- Wisdom of Solomon 1.1-5 (circa 2nd century B.C.) (Revised English Bible translation).

The Love of Law and Liberty

"Law and liberty cannot rationally become the objects of our love, unless they become the objects of our knowledge."
- James Wilson, Of the Study of the Law in the United States, 1790

Quote #64: on standing armies

I've cross posted this quote over at my own blog:

Keep within the requisite limits a standing military force, always remembering that an armed and trained militia is the firmest bulwark of republics - that without standing armies their liberty can never be in danger, nor with large ones safe.

- James Madison (1751-1836), American Founding Father and 4th President of the United States.

Quote #63: on emotions

"All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own."

- Goethe (1749-1832), German philosopher and writer.

Quote #62: on good government

"A good government implies two things; first, fidelity to the objects of the government; secondly, a knowledge of the means, by which those objects can be best attained."

- Jospeh Story (1779-1845), Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court.

Quote #61: on Christian citizenship in the face of a hostile secular regime

A little bit of rhetorical overkill, but the sentiment is sound and in the tradition of St. Paul:

A Christian in an enemy to no one, much less to the emperor; he knows the emperor was raised up by God; therefore, a Christian honors him, reveres him, favors him, and hope for his preservation along with all the empire as long as the world lasts. In fact, the world will last only as long as the empire. We honor the emperor to the degree permitted to us and necessary for him, as a man who is second only to God, who is protected by God, and who is therefore inferior only to God.

- Tertullian (160-220 A.D.), early Christian apologist, Ad Scapulaum 2.

Quote LX

"People who have what they want are fond of telling people who haven't what they want that they really don't want it."

-Ogden Nash (1902-1971)

Quote LIX

"A precedent embalms a principle."

-Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881)

Quote LVIII: The Pursuit of Truth

"The life of study is austere and imposes grave obligations. It pays, it pays richly; but it exacts an initial outlay that few are capable of. The athletes of the mind, like those of the playing field, must be prepared for privations, long training, a sometimes superhuman tenacity. We must give ourselves from the heart, if truth is to give itself to us. Truth serves only its slaves."

- A. G. Sertillanges from The Intellectual Life: Its Spirit, Conditions, Methods

Quote #57: on goodness and beauty

"Beauty is indeed a good gift of God; but that the good may not think it a great good, God dispenses it even to the wicked."

- St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430), Christian bishop and Church Father.

Quote LVI

"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote."

-Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

Quote #55: Loss of Liberty

"No people will tamely surrender their liberties, nor can any be easily subdued, when knowledge is diffused and virtue is preserved. On the contrary, when people are universally ignorant, and debauched in their manners, they will sink under their own weight without the aid of foreign invaders."

- Samuel Adams, letter to James Warren, 1775

Quote #54: on the flawed nature of human decision-making

"Men decide far more problems by hate, love, lust, rage, sorrow, joy, hope, fear, illusion, or some other inward emotion, than by reality, authority, any legal standard, judicial precedent, or statute."

- Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 B.C. - 7 A.D.), Roman statesman and philosopher.

Quote #53: The Purpose of Education

"Education is for the purpose of teaching men to know their true condition, to understand what freedom is and at what price it is bought, and to comprehend the meaning of civilization."

- Calvin Coolidge

Quote #52

"The American Republic will endure until the day congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money."

-Alexis de Toucqueville (1805-1859) from Democracy in America (Vol.II)

Quote #51: why a republic is greater than an empire

Building on Jake's theme of exploring the nature of republics, here's a great quote by one of the great orators of the American political tradition:

"Behold a republic standing erect while empires all around are bowed beneath the weight of their own armaments -- a republic whose flag is loved while other flags are only feared."

- William Jennings Bryan (1860-1925), American statesman and three-time Democratic Party nominee for the presidency.

Quote #50

Here it is. The Fiftieth Quote. I thought this one was an appropriate reminder of what we still have in America despite everything that is going wrong today.

"Republic. I like the sound of the word. It means people can live free, talk free, go or come, buy or sell, be drunk or sober, however they choose. Some words give you a feeling. Republic is one of those words that makes me tight in the throat - the same tightness a man gets when his baby takes his first step or his first baby shaves and makes his first sound as a man. Some words can give you a feeling that makes your heart warm. Republic is one of those words."

-John Wayne as Davy Crockett in The Alamo (1960)

Quote No. XLVIII

"A distinctive feature of the modern world is its passion for the present and fascination with the future at the expense of the past. Progress, choice, change, novelty, and the myth of newer-the-truer and latest-is-the-greatest reign unchallenged, while ideas and convictions from earlier times are boxed up in the cob-webbed attic of nostalgia and irrelevance."

-Os Guinness

Quote #47: on the Lord's advent

From the Old Testament reading assigned for today in the Roman Catholic lectionary:

"Say to them that are of a fearful heart, Be strong, fear not: behold, your God will come with vengeance, with the recompense of God; he will come and save you. Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped. Then shall the lame man leap as a hart, and the tongue of the dumb shall sing; for in the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert. And the glowing sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water: in the habitation of jackals, where they lay, shall be grass with reeds and rushes."

- Isaiah 35.4-7 (American Standard Version).

Quote #46: on redemption

"Wherein is it possible for us, wicked and impious creatures, to be justified, except in the only Son of God? O sweet reconciliation! O untraceable ministry! O unlooked-for blessing! that the wickedness of many should be hidden in one godly and righteous man, and the righteousness of one justify a host of sinners!"

- St. Justin Martyr (100 - 165 A.D.), early Christian theologian, Roman philosopher and martyr for the faith.

Quote No. XLIX

"From the early and the ancient Chinese down to the classical, medieval, and renaissance eras, a rich body of teaching on rulers and the requirements for ruling flourished. Leadership did not simply happen. It was thought through, taught, and cultivated."

-Os Guinness