Quotes about Perspective

A few clear pronouncements on one side and a few honest questions on the other had, in a matter of minutes, shown me that life was not going to be as simple, ever again, as I had thought.

The word suffering is much too grand to apply to most of our troubles, but if we don't learn to refer the little things to God how shall we learn to refer the big ones? A definition which covers all sorts of trouble, great or small, is this: having what you don't want, or wanting what you don't have. The vicissitudes of travel furnish plenty of what Janet Erskine Stuart calls "blessed inconveniences," occasions which fit both categories in our definition.

So if you get all hung up, thinking now is this thing from God or is it from Satan? Is this the voice of God or the voice of Satan? Stop worrying about it. You don't really need to sort that out because here's a case where the thorn was in a sense given by God as a messenger of Satan.

If in fact I do believe these great things we say and sing together, then those little things (and what is not little by comparison?)

I say that I found peace. I do not say that I was not lonely. I was--terribly. I do not say that I did not grieve. I did--most sorely. But peace of that sort the world cannot give comes, not by the removal of suffering, but in another way--through acceptance.

Men like mystery. They don't want to be told everything woman are thinking.

It was he who told her of the three inscriptions over the doors of the Milan Cathedral. One, with a carving of roses, says, "All that pleases is but for a moment"; another, with a carving of a cross, says, "All that grieves is but for a moment"; and over the great central door are only the words, "Nothing is important but that which is eternal.

The real question we need to face is exactly what a Christian is supposed to do when terrible things happen. There are two choices, and only two: We can trust God or we can defy Him. We believe that God is God, He's still got the whole world in His hands and knows exactly what He's doing, or we must believe that He is not God and we are at the awful mercy of mere chance.

God is more interested in our response than He is in the tangible results.

A great many things determine how people live, and money is not at the top of the list. Choices are always available. What you choose will depend on how you see things: yourself, your work, your right to express taste and desire and personality, your understanding of the love of God as expressed in His creation and order and harmony.

Nothing that comes to me is void of divine purpose. In seeking to see the whole with God's eyes, we can find the peace which human events so often destroy.

However healthy you think you are, remember that vegetarians die too.