#beloved

Within my own life, I read all the beloved novels by lamps of vegetable oil; I saw the Standard Oil invading my own village, I saw gas lamps in the Chinese shops in Shanghai; and I saw their elimination by electric lights. ↗

— Hu Shih

#chinese #electric #elimination #gas #i

There is more pleasure in loving than in being beloved. ↗

— Thomas Fuller

#being #beloved #loving #more #pleasure

I never saw, heard, nor read, that the clergy were beloved in any nation where Christianity was the religion of the country. Nothing can render them popular, but some degree of persecution. ↗

— Jonathan Swift

#beloved #christianity #clergy #country #degree

I saw a bank of white light, and then I saw all my beloved animals. For a moment I stepped out of my body. ↗

— Roy Horn

#beloved #body #i #light #moment

Silent solitude makes true speech possible and personal. If I am not in touch with my own belovedness, then I cannot touch the sacredness of others. If I am estranged from myself, I am likewise a stranger to others. ↗

— Brennan Manning

#faith #identity #self #silence #solitude

They were your friends?" "Yes, they were my friends." "And they will leave you to suffer alone?" "Now I see it." "And until this, were they friends you could trust?" "I could trust them." "I see what you mean. You mean they were the kind of friends that a good man could choose, upright, hard-working, obeying the law? Tell me, were they such friends? And now they leave you alone? Did you not see it before?" "I saw it. ↗

— Alan Paton

#cry-the-beloved-country #friends #friendship #friendship

Above all the grace and the gifts that Christ gives to his beloved is that of overcoming self. ↗

— Francis of Assisi

#beloved #christ #gifts #gives #grace

Over the years, I have come to realize that the greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity, or power, but self-rejection. Success, popularity, and power can indeed present a great temptation, but their seductive quality often comes from the way they are part of the much larger temptation to self-rejection. When we have come to believe in the voices that call us worthless and unlovable, then success, popularity, and power are easily perceived as attractive solutions. The real trap, however, is self-rejection. As soon as someone accuses me or criticizes me, as soon as I am rejected, left alone, or abandoned, I find myself thinking, "Well, that proves once again that I am a nobody." ... [My dark side says,] I am no good... I deserve to be pushed aside, forgotten, rejected, and abandoned. Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the "Beloved." Being the Beloved constitutes the core truth of our existence. ↗

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

#christianity #faith #feelings #identity #rejection

Regard your soldiers as your children, and they will follow you into the deepest valleys; look on them as your own beloved sons, and they will stand by you even unto death. ↗

— Sun Tzu

#children #death #deepest #even #follow

As individuals and as a nation, we now suffer from social narcissism. The beloved Echo of our ancestors, the virgin America, has been abandoned. We have fallen in love with our own image, with images of our making, which turn out to be images of ourselves. ↗

— Daniel J. Boorstin

#america #ancestors #been #beloved #echo