#eli

And I came to believe that good and evil are names for what people do, not for what they are. All we can say is that this is a good deed, because it helps someone or that's an evil one because it hurts them. People are too complicated to have simple labels. ↗

— Philip Pullman

#complicated #deed #evil #good #labels

There are all kinds of addicts, I guess. We all have pain. And we all look for ways to make the pain go away. (107) ↗

— Sherman Alexie

#addicts #pain #pain-relief #addiction

Love and respect all people. Hate and destroy all faith. ↗

— Penn Jillette

#faith #love #religion #faith

O Diabo, invejoso, fez o homem confundir fé com religião e amor com casamento. ↗

— Machado de Assis

#hope #life #love #religion #faith

It's time we capture our imaginations for Christ ↗

— Peter E. Gillquist

#god #inspiration #religion #faith

Give us this day our daily Faith, but deliver us, dear God, from Belief. ↗

— Aldous Huxley

#inspirational #island #metaphysical-beliefs #metaphysics #faith

In the midst of friends, home, and kind parents, she was alone. ↗

— William Makepeace Thackeray

#vanity

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

Now, the invention of the scientific method and science is, I'm sure we'll all agree, the most powerful intellectual idea, the most powerful framework for thinking and investigating and understanding and challenging the world around us that there is, and that it rests on the premise that any idea is there to be attacked and if it withstands the attack then it lives to fight another day and if it doesn't withstand the attack then down it goes. Religion doesn't seem to work like that; it has certain ideas at the heart of it which we call sacred or holy or whatever. That's an idea we're so familiar with, whether we subscribe to it or not, that it's kind of odd to think what it actually means, because really what it means is 'Here is an idea or a notion that you're not allowed to say anything bad about; you're just not. Why not? - because you're not! ↗

— Douglas Adams

#religion #science #religion

Leaving your religion and having to invent your own system of values is a big deal, after all. ↗

— Therese Doucet

#faith #philosophy #religion #faith