#idolatry

When people say, "I know God forgives me, but I can't forgive myself," they mean that they have failed an idol, whose approval is more important than God's. ↗

— Timothy Keller

#forgiveness

It is curious how instinctively one protects the image of oneself from idolatry or any other handling that could make it ridiculous, or too unlike the original to be believed any longer. ↗

— Virginia Woolf

#believed #could #curious #handling #how

The art of government is the organisation of idolatry. ↗

— George Bernard Shaw

#government #idolatry #organisation

When anything in life is an absolute requirement for your happiness and self-worth, it is essentially an ‘idol,’ something you are actually worshiping. When such a thing is threatened, your anger is absolute. Your anger is actually the way the idol keeps you in its service, in its chains. Therefore if you find that, despite all the efforts to forgive, your anger and bitterness cannot subside, you may need to look deeper and ask, ‘What am I defending? What is so important that I cannot live without?’ It may be that, until some inordinate desire is identified and confronted, you will not be able to master your anger. ↗

— Timothy Keller

#bitterness #forgiveness #happiness #idolatry #security

I inquired what wickedness is, and I didn't find a substance, but a perversity of will twisted away from the highest substance – You oh God – towards inferior things, rejecting its own inner life and swelling with external matter. ↗

— Augustine of Hippo

#sin #wickedness #life

Every man's work, pursued steadily, tends to become an end in itself, and so to bridge over the loveless chasms of his life. ↗

— George Eliot

#love #work #life

In my teens, I developed a passionate idolatry for a teacher of English literature. I wanted to do something that he would approve of more, so I thought I should be some sort of a scholar. ↗

— Trevor Nunn

#developed #english #english literature #i #idolatry

Families are nothing other than the idolatry of duty. ↗

— Ann Oakley

#families #idolatry #nothing #other #than

Mindset of the man too busy: I am too busy BEING God to become LIKE God. ↗

— Mark Buchanan

#rest #business

Idolatry, then, is always polytheism, an aimless passing from one lord to another. Idolatry does not offer a journey but rather a plethora of paths leading nowhere and forming a vast labyrinth. ↗

— Pope Francis

#idolatry #polytheism #faith