#belief

The best lightning rod for your protection is your own spine. ↗

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

#courage #courage-to-be-oneself #independent-thought #lightning #lightning-rod

If Jesus rose from the dead, then you have to accept all that he said; if he didn't rise from the dead, then why worry about any of what he said? The issue on which everything hangs is not whether or not you like his teaching but whether or not he rose from the dead. ↗

— Timothy Keller

#resurrection #skepticism #age

Sometimes when you get older—and I'm not talking about you, I'm talking generally, because everyone ages differently—things you think on and wish on start to seem real. And then you believe them, and before you know it they're a part of your history, and if someone challenges you on them and says they're not true—why, then you get offended. ↗

— Sara Gruen

#belief #challenge #history #life #offended

It is not for a man to put himself in such an attitude to society, but to maintain himself in whatever attitude he find himself through obedience to the laws of his being, which will never be one of opposition to a just government, if he should chance to meet with such. ↗

— Henry David Thoreau

#self-belief #society #attitude

When you hear a true story, there is a part of you that responds to it regardless of art, regardless of evidence. Let it be the most obvious fabrication and you will still believe whatever truth is in it, because you can not deny truth no matter how shabbily it is dressed. ↗

— Orson Scott Card

#stories #truth #art

It is not what happens to you or for you that makes you grateful. It's how you respond to what is happening, that shows your belief about gratitude. ↗

— Sumner Davenport

#belief #gratitude #truth #attitude

Destiny is real. And she's not mild-mannered. She will come around and hit you in the face and knock you over and before you know what hit you, you're naked- stripped of everything you thought you knew and everything you thought you didn't know- and there you are! A bloody nose, bruises all over you, and naked. And it's the most beautiful thing. ↗

— C. JoyBell C.

#beauty #belief #belief-quotes #destiny #happiness

Stories are masks of God. That's a story, too, of course. I made it up, in collaborations with Joseph Campbell and Scheherazade, Jesus and the Buddha and the Brother's Grimm. Stories show us how to bear the unbearable, approach the unapproachable, conceive the inconceiveable. Stories provide meaning, texture, layers and layers of truth. Stories can also trivialize. Offered indelicately, taken too literally, stories become reductionist tools, rendering things neat and therefore false. Even as we must revere and cherish the masks we variously create, Campbell reminds us, we must not mistake the masks of God for God. So it seemes to me that one of the most vital things we can teach our children is how to be storytellers. How to tell stories that are rigorously, insistently, beautifully true. And how to believe them. ↗

— Melanie Tem

#buddha #children #god #jesus #joseph-campbell

Faith is about doing. You are how you act, not just how you believe. ↗

— Mitch Albom

#belief #faith #faith

Your religious beliefs are your business. They are not and should not be the basis for law. If you use them as justification to discriminate against others, don’t be upset when others decide you’re an asshole." [Blog post of July 26, 2011] ↗

— Jim C. Hines

#discrimination #law #religion #business