Quotes / stories that inspire you or motivate you to be better

“Why do old men wake so early? Is it to have one longer day?”
“I may not be as strong as I think, but I know many tricks and I have resolution.”
“No one should be alone in their old age, he thought.”
― Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea
 
church sign I saw one time (30+ years ago) at exactly the right time that I needed to see it:..

"Hard times make you either bitter or better. You get to choose."


The version we were taught in sales:

"There's no such thing as problems. Just opportunities."

Really gets your head turned around the right way........
 
"The operation of The Green Book and its kind is to produce what may be called Men without Chests. It is an outrage that they should be commonly spoken of as Intellectuals. This gives them the chance to say that he who attacks them attacks Intelligence. It is not so. They are not distinguished from other men by any unusual skill in finding truth nor any virginal ardour to pursue her. Indeed it would be strange if they were: a persevering devotion to truth, a nice sense of intellectual honour, cannot be long maintained without the aid of a sentiment which Gaius and Titius could debunk as easily as any other. It is not excess of thought but defect of fertile and generous emotion that marks them out. Their heads are no bigger than the ordinary: it is the atrophy of the chest beneath that makes them seem so."
- CS Lewis, "The Abolition of Man"
 
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Reading back through another Lewis classic I was reminded of one of my all-time favorite - and most convicting - quote of his:

“It may be possible for each to think too much of his own potential glory hereafter; it is hardly possible for him to think too often or too deeply about that of his neighbor.

The load, or weight, or burden of my neighbor’s glory should be laid daily on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken.

It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare.

All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations.

It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics.

There are no ordinary people.

You have never talked to a mere mortal.

Nations, cultures, arts, civilization—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat.

But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.

This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn.

We must play.

But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously—no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption.

And our charity must be real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner—no mere tolerance or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment.”

CS Lewis, “The Weight of Glory”
 
I always found Lewis to be too preachy. I know that this was a result of his faith, but it didn't make it easier for me to swallow.
 
Yep - "The Weight of Glory" (which I quoted above) was literally part of a sermon delivered by Lewis on Sunday, June 8, 1941 at Oxford University Church of St Mary the Virgin.
I meant in everything that he wrote. Every book.
 
I meant in everything that he wrote. Every book.
I agree...he is not a "classical theologian" in that he debates both sides fully. He is an academic who came to faith late in life after a long and arduous intellectual and spiritual journey. His purpose in these works is to show that Christianity offers the best option for life.

He is not taken seriously by the "intellectual" theological community for this reason. They consider him a public preacher and a 2nd rate theologian. I disagree...he took some fairly sophisticated theological understandings and made them palatable to the average person.

Oxford professor of mathematics, John Lennox, is the current C.S. Lewis...and he is brilliant at it. You can listen to his lectures on YouTube.
 
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