#sincerity

Without feeling abashed by my ignorance, I confess that I am absolutely unable to say. In the absence of an appearance of learning, my answer has at least one merit, that of perfect sincerity. ↗

— Jean Henri Fabre

#absolutely #am #answer #appearance #confess

Men are convinced of your arguments, your sincerity, and the seriousness of your efforts only by your death. ↗

— Albert Camus

#death #efforts #men #only #seriousness

A friend should be one in whose understanding and virtue we can equally confide, and whose opinion we can value at once for its justness and its sincerity. ↗

— Robert Hall

#confide #equally #friend #once #opinion

I want to say with the utmost of sincerity, not as a Republican, but as an American, that I have great respect for Senator Obama's historic achievement to become his party's nominee, not because of his color, but with indifference to it. ↗

— Mike Huckabee

#american #because #become #color #great

I write about wounds, the eternal treasons of life. It's not very funny, but it's sincere. My commitment is to sincerity. ↗

— Tahar Ben Jelloun

#commitment #eternal #funny #i #i write

My experience with the Junior League, when I worked in Philadelphia for four years in reference to children's things, is that whenever they were asked they responded. They always responded with sincerity, and they did a good job. ↗

— C. Everett Koop

#asked #children #did #experience #four

Art gives its vision to beauty not always recognized. And it surrenders freely -- whatever power it possesses to every sincere soul that seeks it. But above all else--it presents us with the gift of ourselves. ↗

— Aberjhani

#art #artists #creative-vision #creativity #gifts

One reason why the Enemy found this so easy was that, without knowing it, I was already desperately anxious to get rid of my religion; and that for a reason worth recording. By a sheer mistake - and I still believe it to have been an honest mistake - in spiritual technique I had rendered my private practice of that religion a quiet intolerable burden. It came about in this way. Like everyone else I had been told as a child that one must not only say one's prayers but think about what one was saying. Accordingly, when I came to a serious belief, I tried to put this into practice. At first it seemed plain sailing. But soon the false conscience (St. Paul's 'Law', Herbert's 'prattler') came into play. One had no sooner reached 'Amen' than it whispered, 'Yes. But are you sure you were really thinking about what you said?'; then, more subtly, 'Were you, for example, thinking about it as well as you did last night?' The answer, for reasons I did not then understand, was nearly always No. 'Very well,' said the voice, 'hadn't you, then, better try it over again?' And one obeyed; but of course with no assurance that the second attempt would be any better...I set myself a standard. No clause of my prayer was to be allowed to pass muster unless it was accompanied by what I called a 'realization,' by which I meant a certain vivedness of the imagination and the affections. My nightly task was to produce by sheer will power a phenomenon which will power could never produce, which was so ill-defined that I could never say with absolute confidence whether it had occurred, and which, even when it did occur, was of very mediocre spiritual value. ↗

— C.S. Lewis

#belief #prayer #satan #sincerity #imagination

Mankind are divided into sects, and individuals think very differently on religious subjects, from the purest motives; and that gracious common Parent, who loves all his children alike, beholds with approbation every one who worships him in sincerity. ↗

— Joseph Lancaster

#approbation #beholds #children #common #differently

Sincerity is impossible, unless it pervade the whole being, and the pretence of it saps the very foundation of character. ↗

— James Russell Lowell

#character #foundation #impossible #pretence #saps