Quotes about Abstract

The disciples wanted a kingdom without a cross. Many would-be "orthodox" or "conservative" Christians in our world have wanted a cross without a kingdom, an abstract "atonement" that would have nothing to do with this world except to provide the means of escaping it.

Theories of atonement do not need to be superimposed on an abstract narrative about Jesus, as has so often been attempted. They grow out of the real-life Jesus stories we already have. It is astonishing that the four gospels have been so underused in "atonement theology.

Human nature is not an empty notion, no purely abstract conception, but a reality, a particular manner of being, which includes distinctive habits, inclinations, and attributes.

Divine love is not humanity but neighbor, the concrete, unique individual. You can only ever love individuals, because only individuals ever exist. Classes and collections are abstract objects of thought, not concretely real things. We group people into groups, but real people are concrete individuals.

True Christianity is not merely believing a certain set of dry abstract propositions: it is to live in daily personal communication with an actual living person - Jesus Christ.

Condemnation by category is the lowest form of hatred, for it is cold-hearted and abstract, lacking even the courage of a personal hatred.

There were many words that you could not stand to hear and finally only the names of places had dignity. Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene.

Praise or blame has but a momentary effect on the man whose love of beauty in the abstract makes him a severe critic on his own works.

The man of science, like the man of letters, is too apt to view mankind only in the abstract, selecting in his consideration only a single side of our complex and many-sided being.

Even now I cannot help feeling that it is a mistake to think that the passion one feels in creation is ever really shown in the work one creates. Art is always more abstract than we fancy. Form and colour tell us of form and colour--that is all. It often seems to me that art conceals the artist far more completely than it ever reveals him.

We live in a world when men treat art as if it were meant to be a form of autobiography. We have lost the abstract sense of beauty.

The more abstract, the more ideal an art is, the more it reveals to us the temper of its age. If we wish to understand a nation by means of its art, let us look at its architecture or its music.