Mission: Impossible Briefing I

This is a compilation of some of my original quotations and aphorisms. I do understand that a great number of individuals are often too preoccupied to sit and read books or long essays, and because I enjoy quotations and archiving things, I am using this post to build a collection of aphorisms that I find useful in summarizing much of my writing. Usually, I cannot just voluntarily sit down in deep thought and begin writing nor would I want to. Nearly everything that comes together, comes together in pieces, out of life, so this post will probably be updated on occasion:

• "The trouble with poetry is it's often written to the sound of a drum only the poet may hear; nonetheless, blessed are those poets who always manage to find unshakeable pleasure in their own works."
• "The unteachable man is sentenced to being taught only by experience. The tragedy is he reaches nothing further than his own pain."
• "People debate over whether or not there is a literal Hell, in the literal sense often described as fire and eternal torture, which, to many, seems to be too harsh a punishment. If men really want to fear something, they should be fearing separation from God, the supposedly more comforting alternative to a literal Hell. For separation from the authorship of love, mercy, and goodness is the ultimate torture. If you think a literal Hell sounds too bad, you are very much underestimating the pain of being absolutely, wholly separated from the goodness while exposed to the reality of the holiness of God."
• "Whatever thing a man gets quickly enraged about is his idol, and whatever thing he makes his idol becomes his religion."
• "Men seek a great deal, but fatally close, albeit very different, is one's pride in proving oneself right with one's zeal for finding the truth."
• "It is the nature of physics to hear the loudest of mouths over the most comprehensive ones."
• "I have a thing for things that last."
• "A distaste for the new is not always fear of the unknown, but sometimes ambition. Some people don't like the new way simply because they never got a chance to master the old way."
• "Your love is as stable as you are: It's not about how good a person makes you feel, but rather what good you can do for them."
• "One who enjoys finding errors will then start creating errors to find."
• "Competition works best in sports, but humans get addicted to stuff."
• "The ones who constantly make us laugh are the hardest of friends to know - for comedians are the caricatures among us."
• "People don't care about being duped as long as they're happy, which is the shortest form of happiness; hence 'self-duprication' becomes a habit."
• "Music is not my life. My life is music."
• "It's fallacious reasoning for the atheist to hate all religion due to men who manipulate religion to fit their own agendas. They are counterparts, therefore, if Truth is true, partners in crime. To believers, the atheist and the religiously corrupt boil down to the same person, the self-righteous: one denies Truth to fit his own agenda; the other manipulates Truth to fit his own agenda."
• "One of the Christian's biggest fears is appearing 'too Christian'. God forbid, because that's often characterized as god-awful! We want to be one, but without being 'one of them'."
• "Wisdom without Christ brings bitterness; with Christ it brings compassion."
• "The artist is often misunderstood because, stepping outside himself and holding most details in great tension, he's about as complex as a shape-shifter; or a head with faces on all sides, but not necessarily in the negative connotation as one being two-faced usually implies. For instance, to be misunderstood can mean to be improperly deemed a troublemaker when that is not one's true intent: you see, to troublemakers, the artist knows that the peacemaker may seem like a troublemaker; therefore he may, whether in honesty or in jest, at times, present himself as a troublemaker for perceptual, artistic flair. But then to the artless peacemakers, because of this they will interpret him as a troublemaker. This is why the artist has so few allies. To the troublemakers he's a troublemaker, yet still the peacemakers a troublemaker."
• "When you're appeasing too much, you might be egotistically over-estimating everyone's need for your approval."
• "You think you're losing your mind, but do keep in mind, as long as you may, that the ability to go on thinking such a thing means it's not all gone."
• "A man of God has many brothers. He is a wounded soldier - he is familiar with the pain one feels in his heart, as a close and loving brother, when a brother falls victim of evil men or turns to evil desires (the latter sometimes even betrayal). Because of this, too, he is and must be well-acquainted with and trained in the strengths of hope and the gentleness of forgiveness and mercy."
• "Excitement is a crossroad which runs in all directions. No man lacks personality; he just never connected with you at the intersection."
• "Perhaps a seemingly dull, boring person is not a person who lacks personality, but rather a person with so much personality most other things bore them."
• "An assumption is the joke; truth the punchline."
• "The sea in all its vastness is its own, real world. Man is nature's sci-fi."
• "Good...if you've done things you aren't proud of. It means you have a conscience."
• "During the flames of controversy, opinions, mass disputes, conflict, and world news, sometimes the most precious, refreshing, peaceful words to hear amidst all the chaos are simply and humbly 'I don't know.'"
• "On the inside, the copycats of the ruffians are more delicate than the copycats of prudes."
• "Normality is the new eccentric."
• "I believe God himself will someday debate with and answer every objection arrogant men can come up with against him; I believe he will humble us and humor himself. Know-it-alls, pseudo-intellectuals, militant anti-theists, for Christ's sake, or rather their own sake, best beware of getting roasted by their own medicine. Ah! Our delusions of trying to argue against an omniscient Creator."
• "I'm not offended until you think I'm offended."
• "Society tells me to follow my own truth, but I don't let society tell me what to do. If you need someone to tell you that, chances are you're part of the crowd that will move on to the next fashion that comes around."
• "Dreams and freedom are the same. In order for them to be, they come with a price."
• "A mature heart for Christ would much rather spend its time praising him than condemning his fanatics."
• "What good is there in being blind, you ask? Well, maybe it's to see the beauty on the inside without being vainly distracted, or superficially blinded, by the ugly on the outside."
• "You can't be a rebel without the scars that come with it. Truth is, some days scars are just as ugly as they are beautiful."
• "It's okay to be honest about not knowing rather than spreading falsehood. While it is often said that honesty is the best policy, silence is the second best policy."
• "Extreme right-wingers are known for giving God a bad name; extreme left-wingers are known for giving God a weak name. He's not as simple as conservative versus liberal, old versus new. His wings are balanced. God is both and neither."
• "A god who gave us everything we wanted would be the most malevolent god of all. With an infantile curiosity, we insist on tasting the cockroach on the floor while our father is preparing a magnificent feast for us."
• "Of course we'll win. And even if we were to lose, we'd win at losing."
• "It is neither just the religious, the spiritual, the power-hungry, the evil, the ignorant, the corrupt, the Christian, the Muslim, the Hindu, the Buddhist, the Jew, nor the atheist that makes a hypocrite, but being a human being. Any man who thinks himself to be free of hypocrisy while committed to cherry-picking others for such, I am confident, the Almighty can prove to him a great deal of his own hypocrisy even beyond his earthly comprehension."
• "It is better to doubt that a concept is stupidly flying under your head than profoundly flying over your head."
• "God loves atheists. The former ones make the most compelling theists because they're so empirically familiar with how atheists think."
• "Advanced technology does not always promise a more intelligent civilization. On the contrary, the more the common people rely on technology to do their thinking and solving for them, the less practice there is left for their own brains."
• "Philosophy may serve as the bridge between theology and science. All atheism is a philosophy, but not all philosophy is atheism. Philosophy ('love of wisdom') is simply a tool depending on how one uses it, and in some cases, logically understanding the nature of God and existence."
• "The most mesmerizing of artists is always like one who was merely drawing in the sand and people came to watch."
• "What man is really anti-progressive? For he is only anti-certain-people's-visions-for-the-future."
• "The thing about stereotyping is it's usually just throwing rocks into a crowd hoping to hit somebody who deserves it."
• "It's always funny that you can try and try again to steal all your critics' ammo, predict their responses, but no matter what, they'll still have a water gun stashed somewhere."
• "Pretentiousness isn't always just big words and meaningless jargon, but also pretty words that either when put into action don't mean beans or hurt you in the long run. Oftentimes, the former appeals to the intellect whereas the latter appeals to the heart."
• "You maintain hope for humanity as an infinite skeptic of gossip and slander. In all mankind's desires for entertainment and exaggeration and sensationalism, when it comes to gossip, the individual always sounds worse than he really is. This is why adhering to gossip subtly affects the mental state of the listener - he goes on holding shady opinions regardless of where the realities of their lights and darknesses may stand."
• "Some things are so silly they have a certain brilliance to them. Other things, set as standards for brilliance and therefore exalted by many who don't know why, become tarnished because of it."
• "In the modern Christian attempt to take a stand as Christ did, and maybe for others, win the approval of the world, the Christian will often think that it consists of targeting and demoralizing fellow Christians and only fellow Christians. It is one thing to stand against religious hypocrisy when one sees it, but it is another to go on snorting at anything or anyone who might seem 'too Christian' to us. The irony is that by doing this we are further advocating hypocrisy and 'half-hearted Christians'."
• "In a sense, discouragement does not have to exist. Allow it to be rather the encouragement to honestly reconsider all the options, then, as necessary, shine on."
• "When everyone believes they are the life coaches, who are the players?"
• "When enemies, the intellect and the heart only see one another as the hater and the fool."
• "Children are the most reasonable about discipline. When they tell you not to do something, it's always because they know why."
• "A part of me genuinely wanted to be the worst because I was so sick of everyone fighting to be the best."
• "Pseudo-artists think that being an artist means opposing whatever seems to be an establishment. That is not creative at all. True creativity is the ability to gain perspective wherever you may have missed it before."
• "I will admit that we as young rebels always wanted fundamentalists to understand our take on their religion, but rarely, if ever, the other way around. The fundamentalists are the real artists. If you saw only a masterpiece of an original painting and someone threw a splash of red across it saying that their version is better, you would be offended too."
• "We're very familiar with the idea that some things are so complex they're beyond our comprehension. This not only keeps us solving and experimenting but also distracted. Many things are really so simple we can't see them under our big noses."
• "Treat people like people. Beware of pity and patronization because in them, you can't see when you're unashamedly looking down on someone."
• "Where neither go wrong, the naive only see the world as a victim of bad doctrine; the cynic only sees good doctrine as a victim of the world."
• "The hardest thing for a sane person to do is not care what anyone thinks, although everyone swears by it, hence our glorification of insanity."
• "The most judgmental people are often those who complain most about being judged. The ones not complaining will look as though they're the ones doing the judging."
• "Respect? Of course, always, to all, because everything seems funnier when you're trying to show respect."
• "Most people want so desperately to be an individual yet are so easily shaped by the media."
• "If Christ be a fraud, he was among the most peculiar yet brilliant of frauds in saying that only he was the way, the truth, and the life. This is the importance of grace - some people think that simply being nice and not harming others is morality; others think that following rules and tithing are morality. But without Christ, all moral beliefs ultimately boil down to the one sin which perpetually rails against the concept of grace: man's lawful, religious, and futile attempt at establishing his own righteousness."
• "The conscious attempt to be a good person without Christ is as legalistic as an attempt to make it into Heaven through empty religiosity."
• "The aim is to love God because the pure heart loves loving God and because the true mind knows He deserves it. Unlike the accusations and beliefs of the critics and skeptics, it is neither an obligation of duty; nor a fear of damnation; nor a wish for power; nor a desire to appear more righteous than others; nor because God needs it; but because through all love, truth, reason, faith, honesty, and joy in and beyond oneself and the universe, He is worthy."
• "The self-centered man will always expect nothing but praise. He will hope and expect all incoming criticism to be mere self-projection from the critic because when you're self-centered, self-projection is all you can imagine one can do."
• "The surface of learning is hearing what your ears aren't prepared to hear, and the core of learning is hearing what your ears don't want to hear."
• "It can be a good thing if deeper theology, or philosophy, only makes one more uncertain. It may lead to a healthy doubt; he may throw his hands up saying, 'God, I just don't know anymore. If you're out there, I'm giving it all to you.' From there, after the surrender, he is allowing God himself, rather than theories, books, and documents, to take over and lead him into all truth."
• "As time moves on the line will blur. It will no longer seem to be the simplicity of good versus evil, but good versus fools who think they are good."
• "The young are often savvy in the cultural world but not so much the intellectual; the old the intellectual but not so much the cultural. But I tell you those who do the most damage during an era are very much aware of both."
• "The most fragile, unhappy people destine themselves to live lives of constantly reminding themselves to be happy."
• "The height of cleverness is in one's ability to be very clever without seeming clever at all."
• "Fresh, solid ideas feel like gifts to writers, therefore every morning is Christmas."
• "As a poet there is something about joy I find hard to express, whereas every other emotion is rather simple. For instance, you never feel so bad that you can't describe how bad you feel, but joy on the other hand is far too divine for human language."
• "Frequent risk-takers have had their fair shares of failures and successes, hence, being confident in reaching their goals, they will usually seem insensitive to whether or not they look foolish or cool to other people."
• "The factory of love encompasses all, but on some days, does it seem to be one of suffocation, squeezing its target too tightly? And on other days not tight enough? Or maybe that is the breath of a living love knowing when to protect, when to release, and when to protect again. For we are the products of an active love - the Father the creator, the Son the perfecter, the Spirit the supervisor - but just like in a factory, to deny the process is to ultimately create a defect of oneself."
• "The only truths worth arguing about are those truths that could prevent or lead to circumstances that may bite us in the rear sooner or later."
• "When making a point, there are 2 types of people who may disagree with you: those who can support their reasons, and the childish ones who are too worried about being told what to do."
• "People think that fun in Christ is non-existent, but there is fun wherever your heart lives."
• "The 2 extremes, neither one worse than the other: the result of bad religion is self-loathing and violence; the result of bad spirituality is self-worship and narcissism."
• "The hard part about one being tough yet meek is the illusion of being a punching bag."
• "Ingredients to success: know what you do well, know what to do well, and know someone who's swell."
• "Intelligent people, as some say, in their openness, are indeed slow to criticize, but conversely, in their openness to the concerns of others, the genuine are slow to fret about being criticized."
• "Knowledge is power, as some say. But on some days it is just as much pain and confusion as it is power; and any wise man worth his salt as a wise man at least understands this. One may be able to comprehend all the human perspectives in the universe, but this gives more to decipher regarding what is actually true; and even after discovering the truth, the challenge is in maintaining a patience for the infinite number of opinions that do not reflect that truth. Its consistency in man is challenge. A worldly knowledge ends at the former challenge of confusion, but the knowledge of Christ ends at the latter challenge of patience."
• "How to love is the real question. We all know to love and to keep loving more, but man's confusion comes from the differing opinions on how to love. The Church will always be accused of not loving enough by human standards - which should be its motivation to love more - however that is, in many cases, because its focus is and should also be to love on levels of eternal significance. This is the level of love that will inevitably go unnoticed by those who do not believe in eternity."
• "Yes, be different, but not for the vanities of being different."
• "The vanity of intelligence is that the intelligent man is often more committed to 'one-upping' his opponent than being truthful. When the idea of intelligence, rather than intelligence itself, becomes a staple, there is no wisdom in it."
• "To be more precise about it, it is neither close nor open-mindedness but wisdom, discernment, and a pure heart that God wants."
• "Love is one of those topics that plenty of people try to write about but not enough try to do."
• "The more we love God, the more unpleasant sin becomes."
• "It's easy to make a mess when you're not the one who has to clean it up."
• "For those constantly full of joy, they sometimes feel a little guilty for always feeling so good. That guilt is compassion: it flies in with an attempt to share one's joy with others who do not have it."
• "In our worldly perceptions of Jesus, we tend to embrace the kindness of his love ('be encouraged') but not the discipline of his love ('and sin no more'). But with the whole scope of his love, or maturity in Christ, we begin relying on him for guidance where we would prefer him to walk beside us rather than behind us."
• "The man who sins but wants to purify it is no more a sinner than the man who doesn't sin but wants to sin."
• "You can be yourself without pursuing yourself. Have you ever seen a dog chase his own tail? He just runs in circles."
• "They say that people fall in and out of love, but do they, too, fall in hate? Or fall into indifference? It has hindered men for ages the notion that one falls in love rather than decides to truly love, the notion that his lack of control, on the B-side, can also make him fall in hate or indifference without the responsibility to help it or control it."
• "My heart goes out to some of those rather hostile yet highly intelligent individuals who may see problems really because they have solutions. That hostility is learned in defense; not offense. An often stubborn and prideful world, in its self-destructive, temporary bliss of ignorance, may be violently resistant to the watchful mind."
• "Christianity is at its purest a philosophy about a person, Jesus Christ, and at its dirtiest a philosophy about requirements and law."
• "Truth in Christ is not a matter of being near or far like in martial arts when you strive for a black belt. He saves us then we grow; not the other way around."
• "Everyone has a natural slant towards seeking themselves. This gets in the way of seeking God unless God intervenes."
• "Part of God's work in his people is synchronizing the heart and the mind thus providing freedom from the deceit of emotion-based beliefs. Emotions are changing while truth is absolute. They don't believe simply because it sounds good, or deep, beautiful, happy, fun, cool, simple, or intelligent to them; but because it's true."
• "Conscious minds can, at the most, comprehend that the whole idea of a 'God' is his superiority, his omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience; and therefore, at the least, desire him, someone far greater than themselves."
• "The apologist is most entrusted with apologetics when capable of arguing his opponent's position better than his opponent."
• "The whole bloated sensation of success is wiped clean when among family. There is no pressure of being looked upon as 'the brilliant one' but rather the comforts of always being the pupil."
• "Let me be content with myself to the degree that my capacity to serve others is present, yet discontent with myself to the degree that I may still like to grow in better service for others."
• "All men are born firstly with the instinct to protect themselves. But few grow to really love themselves, and even fewer learn to love their neighbor as themselves."
• "Wherever there is abuse there is also corruption. Politics, philosophy, theology, science, industry, any field with the potential to affect the well-being of others can be destroyed by abuse and saved by good will."
• "A major gap between many of the denominations stems from how people define some of the most basic terms, such as 'religion' itself."
• "We are to give (and take) true love without falling into the narcissistic habit of only trying to take it in."
• "To spend your time wanting things is to smother your time for achieving things beyond your expectations."
• "Growing up I often wondered how the world would be today if, since the beginning of human life, every person acted as I did."
• "As a kid my heart would break for the villains."
• "The love of Christ is always there and unchanging, no matter what we do, but it is when we are obedient that we actually begin to feel it."
• "Good intentions but bad results; bad results but lessons learned. There is a dark corner on every task beautiful and a beautiful corner on every task dark."
• "It is not so much freedom of speech but the right to truth that great men protect."
• "Man has 2 common problems with God: the one is that there is evil in the world; the other is that free will is limited. The one, he is charging that the world is too evil; the other is that it is not evil enough."
• "The most important part of discernment is pinpointing the forces to be reckoned with, both the constructive and destructive."
• "In societies where coolness and being cool is a top priority, the religious replace the word 'religious' with 'spiritual' to make their faiths seem less extreme."
• "To believe in the truth of Christ is to be introduced to another form of hatred, and that is not sharing Him."
• "Tolerance never exists without negative judgment. It is the sentiment of having a negative opinion about something yet still putting up with it."
• "Tolerance is not infinite patience, but slain patience; patience that has lost its hope and love and has thrown in the towel."
• "Some people's theologies come across as blatantly wrong when weighed against what is revealed in Scripture. However God has mercy on those who may be wrong but genuinely seek understanding before seeking themselves."
• "The pain of the narcissist is that, to him, everything is really a threat. What doesn't surrender in reverence is blasphemous to a high opinion of oneself - the burden of self-importance. The narcissist reconstructs his own law of gravity which states that all things and all creatures must adhere to his personal satisfaction, but when they do not, the pain is far more intense than it is for one who is free from the clamors of 'I'."
• "Let what offends God offend me, and what God pardons, I pardon."
• "The emphasis and the reason for a pure humility is to result in love for others; not always necessarily the belittlement of self. When there is pride and self-righteousness and being pretentiously too far above, generally, one has a difficult time reaching the compassionate side of love for others, the side that understands (or at least attempts to understand): 'I am aware that I am not so far from falling in the same way.' Humility seeks to understand, and sometimes even relate; and in result, the love lovingly, properly, effectively wills the removal of the destructive sins of another as from oneself."
• "To reach only for that which pleasantly enchants you is the least of imagination, if even imagination at all, by the obvious reality of remaining within your means. The greater of imagination is parallel to risk. It extends beyond your comfort zone or haven, or sense of beauty, or what you personally believe suits you in exploration of what may not."
• "People love answers, but only as long as they are the ones who came up with them."
• "We often hear about stepping outside ourselves, but rarely about stepping outside our generation."
• "All the good stuff has already been said by someone somewhere at some point in time. You just have to find it. Today, communication pretty much comes down to understanding - saying what you have to say clearly and effectively...and then living it."
• "Man was created to glorify God. Now, that may encompass other things which God has planned for each man, but essentially, man was created to glorify God."
• "Love does not dwell on how much one receives in return. If there is ever any balance in love, it is in a contest of who can love who more."
• "The real test of love is loving those who we feel are the hardest ones to love."
• "I often think that I'm the least judgmental person I know, and that's what makes me self-righteous."
• "What further helps to reveal reality is when our personal thinking ceases to take reality for granted."
• "The man who is most aggressive in teaching tolerance is the most intolerant of all: he wants a world full of people too timid and ashamed to really disagree with anything."
• "The creation of man is evidence for the love of God, the preservation of man is evidence for the patience of God, and Christ is evidence for the forgiveness of God. It is when we are wrapped up in our own little peeves that we begin to displace His benevolence with malevolence."
• "Honesty is not the same as truth. That is the obstacle of the notion of relative truths. I would like to put my trust in the lunatic. He is the one least concerned of what I think of him, the mark of an honest man. I can always depend on him to be completely honest in what he thinks and feels, about anything, no matter the consequences laid before him, however with no course of rationale, I cannot necessarily take his word for even the well-being of him in his own reality."
• "We tend to think that refusing to exalt Christ is staying true to our self-will and personal freedom when really we are condemning ourselves. Sure, we can pretend to stay true to ourselves, but if you want to talk about reality, all of that is completely trivial if this life is an island and He's the only pilot with a plane and a flight plan."
• "The humble ones are always learning and improving, and their secret is always that it's a secret."
• "I still believe that many Americans have a deep longing for that glorious moment when a sermon is more Biblical than American."
• "I'm starting to think that my level of intrigue outweighs my fear of controversy."
• "In learning and argumentation, the quality brain is similar to a facility of maximum security. What passes the logic test, free of fallacy and pretense, then must pass the test of biblical accuracy in order to proceed as an adopted, reliable truth."
• "The only thing more dangerous than ignorance is the pretense of intelligent ignorance. The former is teachable; the latter is not."
• "If truth is like the terrain, are we the generation who sees it as one who has worn shoes all his life or one who has never worn shoes? Yet still, even if the walk starts out as painful, the experience may be well worth it."
• "Excuses will become self-refuting. No man who does not believe that Jesus is the perfect, sinless Son of God can, in his desperation and love for sin, reasonably use and misconstrue Jesus' words that unless a Christian is perfect, then that Christian cannot judge sin. Otherwise this non-believer is unconsciously entertaining a belief that Jesus, unlike any other man to ever live, was indeed perfect and sinless in His judgments and therefore that Christian is supposed to be like Him."
• "In the end, only God can see the heart of an individual and distinguish the difference between legalistic deadweight and the passion of holy solemnity."
• "When comprehending how different people truly are, you also comprehend the absolute necessity of some divine authority."
• "If you're capable of despising your own behavior, you might just love yourself."
• "It's simple, it's not that simple; or life is simple, but the things in it are not. When a man does not understand it, he tends to inflate it. When he does, he tends to deflate it. In the end, neither images are fully accurate."
• "There is a difference between criticizing people and criticizing a people's uninformed ideals. That is, unless one defines himself or others by their ideals, then he is offended, and usually offended secretly. Because oddly enough, this person is the same person quickest to resort to dismissive name-calling, such as 'bigot' or 'zealot'. And oddly enough, he is always the one, the 'open-minded' one, who adamantly protests for, not only himself, but others not to listen to any type of scholarly theological truth inherently for the sake of his own personal, moral beliefs."
• "Some concepts are so incredibly risky they take an honest fool to try to articulate them."
• "Ask anyone and they'll most likely say their family is crazy, and if they don't say their family is crazy, their friends are crazy. That's because everyone is crazy after taking the mask off. People are most themselves when not really trying to fit in, when either alone or around those already closest to them, and that is crazy."
• "I think that most artists scorned would prefer to be known as the one with the genius brain risking no career over the one with the good brain and great career."
• "It is ignorance that is at times incomprehensible to the wise; for instance, he may not see 'the positive person' or 'the negative person' in a black and white way as many people do. A wise man may not understand it because, as a catalyst of wisdom, but not wise in his own eyes, even he can learn from and give back to fools. To think that an individual has absolutely nothing to offer to the table is counter-intuitively what the wise man considers to be 'the ignorance of hopelessness'."
• "Thunderstorms are as much our friends as the sunshine."
• "The weather is nature's disruptor of human plans and busybodies. Of all the things on earth, nature's disruption is what we know we can depend on, as it is essentially uncontrolled by men."
• "I enjoy melancholic music and art. They take me to places I don't normally get to go."
• "If ever it's necessary to ride the bandwagon, it's done with one leg swinging out and eyes scoping the fields."
• "The Christian does not avoid sin to achieve salvation, but rather salvation brings him to a desire not to sin. The closer that one's spirit is synchronized with the holy knowledge of God, the more he comprehends how and why sin is destructive to himself and others in each and every circumstance. The dwindling desire for sin is a premature gift of Heaven - where there will be no sin, where all will, too, possess that full and complete wisdom; all will have perfect reasons not to sin. In this way, free will might still exist, but the shared wisdom of God will simply outwit all desires, impulses, and needs to sin."
• "The skeptic says that the believer has lost his own mind under God. On the contrary, it is the people who follow God who are most like his children, who willingly and consciously walk in his will; but those who oppose him oppose him vainly and at their own expense, and, figuratively, seem to be more like his tools. They don't diminish his glory, but instead he still manages to use them in ways of unconsciously carrying out his will."
• "Sometimes you feel as though you've slandered yourself, but the joke's on them."
• "What decent philosopher was ever an appeaser? The former is a rare catch among the multitudes of modern opinionists. His role is to be one who loves truth. That is a place where his love for humanity is more powerful than his love for hot air about empowering humanity."
• "Gloating is a superficial glowing, floating is an idle flowing, and bloatedness is the paralysis of blowing up; because silent movement results in loud victories."
• "God is our final say in who and what's negative and who and what's positive in our lives. It is best not to have this so over-simplified as the illusioned superstitionists have it; an infinite being's tests may not always be so flowery, and the things we may see as positive are in many cases simply desires of our sinful nature. We are to protect our spirit without falling into the narcissistic mistake of trying to protect our selfish emotions, which the latter, in turn, is more than unlikely to bring peace and happiness. But rather guilt and emptiness. When one walks around constantly, in his mind, attempting to separate positive versus negative people, he is already controlled by something even worse than those he calls the 'negative people', and that is before he spots it soon enough to avoid it as he hypocritically tries to avoid them."
• "For wordsmiths and masters of words, without necessarily being harsh with words, the words have a tendency to shoot straight to the hearts of people, and this either deeply touches them or deeply angers them. Like the apostles in all their loving controversies are those who are masters of words while combining this gift with truth."
• "We are to love God most importantly so that we can grow to love people as he loved us, not so that we can feel more divine and worthy than the worldly."
• "To be extremely happy but extremely intelligent is a task of being optimistic without being cheesy."
• "God gives His deepest discernment and sharpest marksmanship to men who aim to expose His truth before an enemy's lies."
• "There's more to logic than identifying logical fallacies."
• "An insincere critic of a sincere person never wins."
• "It is ironic that constructive thinkers are often misunderstood as negative, as they differ from those longing for positivity: constructive thinkers have been conditioned to find positive in negative rather than suffering from the negative in negative. Or as Paul the Apostle wrote, 'I have learned the secret to contentment in any and every circumstance.' He was right. Indeed the Lord is our strength, especially under the commandment to love one another. Otherwise we are nothing and easily thrown about by both our own and other people's mind control in a painful, mental, physical desperation to run from every thought, every thing, and every one not seeming so positive or immediately beneficial to us."
• "When focusing only on one's credentials one boasts his own incompetence in his capacity for discernment of the individual."
• "Of course, in our train of thought, we would all like to think we're on the right track, or at least the same railroad company as the right track."
• "As followers of Christ, we are to be careful not to remain victims of the many cultural presuppositions of who he is, and what he teaches, insofar as taking for granted our own caricatures of him. Let it boil in both mind and heart the question, 'If Jesus were to appear today, how many of us would actually recognize him and his teachings (or would it simply be a recount of his first visit)?'"
• "To love without need or without expectation of restitution, that is how we ought to love."
• "If one should criticize one should always have a meaningful explanation to accompany."
• "God knew man would evolve. People think some of the Old Testament laws are absurd now because we live in a very different culture, a different time period. They had their problems and we have ours. God is constant but man is not, and he foreknew the ever-changing world his people would have to deal with; therefore, and if there is indeed an omniscient God, a Christ-like figure would be our only rational, possible connection to a constant, holy God throughout the evolution of culture and social law. The only answer that makes sense when it comes to relevance regarding religions and time periods is Christ, and the chances are slim that men could have invented it."
• "It is never just disagreement but always intellectual dishonesty that is the apologist's worst enemy. And its apprentice is ignorance."
• "It is debatable whether blind faith is truly faith at all. Faith is the perceptive gray area where scientific facts meet an individual's experiential truths - the extreme of the former is left feeling in the dark whereas the latter is caught blinded by the light. By proper scientific method, it is intellectually dishonest for me to declare the existence of God with utmost certainty, but to my individual spirit, I would be intellectually dishonest to deny the existence of God even for a second. This leaves the best of both worlds, as the believer is called to be able to give reasons for his faith, a deviation from mere fantasy."
• "Those 'back burner' thoughts, the ones the brain isn't quite sure about yet, may cook the slowest yet they often manage to be the tastiest when they come out."
• "God speaks of his children shining best in ways that only he can provide. The heavens lift one as a golden child while the flesh lowers one to a child with gold."
• "When we find that God's ways always coincide with our own ways, it's time to question who we're really worshipping, God or ourselves. The latter moves the nature of godliness from the King to our servant to a slave, a deduction into the realm of selfhood and then the lower, slavehood. It's a spiritual mathematics in that men who need God in his godhood are humble yet strong and spiritually ambitious while men who need a slave in their selfhood are ultimately paralyzed and will remain paralyzed."
• "Usually without realizing it, our ultimate peace starts and ends in the authority of God alone, which means the solution to living in joy, peace, and harmony with our fellow men has been here for all since the beginning of mankind and throughout civilization. I have yet to feel the urge to argue politics: it reminds me of getting off the freeway to sit in raging traffic."
• "A sign of a lover of wisdom is his delight in not running his mouth about things he doesn't know."
• "When you mature in your relationship with God you realize how suffering and patience are like eating your spiritual vegetables."
• "History does seem to repeat itself hence it's mindboggling to still hear the 'avoid all negative people' speeches from, of all people, supposedly important spiritual teachers. Ironically, their congregations would probably be the ones hiding their faces from the accuracies of truth speakers like Christ. Now, Christ was the complete opposite of negative, however the danger is that truth is often misunderstood as negativity by those who are constantly taught to only seek flattery."
• "There's sometimes a tugging feeling you get to push further when you aren't being challenged enough or when things get too comfortable."
• "Love in this life is expanded by our anticipation of the next life. Those who love under God are never satisfied with small love, or love bound by the flaws of human emotion. Those who love under God dream of another life where they can experience it and live it in God's perfect form, so they seek to build it in this life as much as possible."
• "An artistic perspective will jab at you from a different angle; its logic comes like a pitcher with a curveball."
• "Many of us fight for and boast our freedom of what is ultimately the ability to prove ourselves to other people. It is unfortunate that only a few of us are so free in our joy, we no longer feel the need to prove ourselves to anyone."
• "The eye of danger and the face of fear are what really pull off a person's mask."
• "Our enemies are quite good for relentlessly keeping us sharp and on our toes. This especially goes for sincere philosophers. They use their enemies to challenge their arguments so that they can know the weak points in their own reasoning and how to argue for and strengthen their position. There are just none like one's enemies to always look for his mistakes and do it harder than anyone else."
• "Religion, like science, is only noteworthy when it emphasizes a matter of what is true rather than whose belief is greater or lesser or which deity works for whom. Sincere religion and tested science are similar in that their assertions can be argued logically and objectively; otherwise, we get false cults and babble."
• "When we look for success, it should be for the sole purpose of boasting sincerely in Christ. There's no other reason for it. Success is only worth it when the more intense it gets for you, the more you find yourself bragging for his glory rather than your own."
• "The Christian should never have to put others down in order to feel good about himself. Instead, he can simply check out the media's insistent portrayal of Christianity and feel grateful that he isn't as deceived as the masses who really swallow the garbage. Ignorance is ultimately how people put themselves down, and the mere Christian who knows what entails the mere Christian is ultimately free from such."
• "When you find that a theology has nothing more to offer than what the world already offers, then that theology as a theology is impractical, and therefore, useless."
• "It is neither judgment nor judgment according to the status quo with which we have a problem, but rather judgment according to God's Word. We sharply dress ourselves, go out into the world, shape ourselves, our personalities according to the world's standards and preferences, allow ourselves to be made dull by the world and its desires in order to appear successful and happy and attractive in the eyes of the world: we love the world's judgment but we hate God's judgment. Absurdly enough, the one which really matters, the one out of the purest of loves rather than that of a mere contract in hopes of mutual gain, is the one from which we so adamantly try to cut off, shut off, and distance ourselves."
• "I've come to the point where I never feel the need to stop and evaluate whether or not I am happy. I'm just 'being', and without question, by default, it works."
• "Unlike wealth, there is an infinite value in legacy."
• "When we begin to reflect Christ, the Bible, when more understood as being centered around Christ, seems to be potentially every man's biography regarding God's promised experiences and truth for him - his individual, unique path of humbling oneself before the Lord and then being exalted by the Lord back into his true and righteous personhood. Many followers may speak of it merely to try to change other people (before changing themselves), but the prophets speak of it as a living word which miraculously tells their very own experiences."
• "If I love a dose of (good) theology or philosophy, I probably also love discipline, improvement, wisdom, and challenges. If I hate it, I am probably too comfortable and proud to try to question myself."
• "I think that there are excellent and poor thinking habits just as there are healthy and unhealthy eating habits; and when a man really knows how to think, you cannot necessarily assert that he thinks too much in a strictly negative connotation. Perhaps this is in a sense food for thought, whereas the other is fool for thought."
• "Genius - the pursuit of madness."
• "Hypocrisy versus authenticity among men is not always so black and white, and as is righteousness, humility is often self-proclaimed. The Church is most definitely supposed to be a hospital for the spiritually, emotionally, mentally, and physically sick, hurting, and broken individual, yet ironically, many of its critics are those who ran away and permanently denounced its members after they visited and felt that they were sneezed on."
• "The exaggerated dopamine sensitivity of the introvert leads one to believe that when in public, introverts, regardless of its validity, often feel to be the center of (unwanted) attention hence rarely craving attention. Extroverts, on the other hand, seem to never get enough attention. So on the flip side it seems as though the introvert is in a sense very external and the extrovert is in a sense very internal - the introvert constantly feels too much 'outerness' while the extrovert doesn't feel enough 'outerness'."
• "We first become salesmen as children in the confession booths of our parents."
• "Great minds think alike because a greater Mind is thinking through them."
• "The eye of true equality often seems to have some degree of disrespect for the supposedly accomplished, privileged high and lofty to the supposedly accomplished, privileged high and lofty, although in reality, it's simply irrespectiveness."
• "Create with the heart; build with the mind."
• "The crazy creatives are the creatives who never go completely mad. They aren't so easily disheartened by the seemingly endless amounts of scrutiny that creative individuals tend to receive because they, like insanity, are the ones who feed off of opposition and negative feedback and manage to continue along with a healthy ambition. It is the crazy that teaches us to use our gifts wisely and own all the attackers."
• "Peaceful disputes are maintained when men sincerely believe that they are morally, logically correct about the issues at hand. It is when neither side is really certain that wars are instigated."
• "The only honorable, desirable kind of fear that shouldn't be feared is the fear of harm on a loved one. It's the kind of fear that leads to self-sacrifice and the kind of fear where you would truly jump in front of a bus to save another."
• "The love of conflict is most evident when opposing forces join sides to defeat the peacemaker."
• "Those who stand for different causes during different generations often experience the same oppositions and the same difficulties as those of the previous and the next generations. That is the basis of history repeating itself."
• "There are two circumstances that lead to arrogance: one is when you're wrong and you can't face it; the other is when you're right and nobody else can face it."
• "If I were to envy any persons on this planet, it would be mountain hermits. You often hear old platitudes such as, 'Speak out. Be heard.' On the contrary, a breath of fresh air would be something like: 'Silence, think for at least 15 minutes, and then maybe speak out.'"
• "The reality of loving God is loving him like he's a Superhero who actually saved you from stuff rather than a Santa Claus who merely gave you some stuff."
• "One of the biggest contradictions in self-proclaimed open-mindedness is to say that we're all one but when a true bigot comes around tell him we're all different. It's usually the case that neither side is correct. One might have the right to do something, anything, but sure enough, that doesn't mean it's right and a benefit to other people."
• "What may intimidate a man is a woman who thinks with her mind before she feels with her heart. Nevertheless what determines the strength in the man is his ability to accept one when he sees one."
• "Cleverness isn't always true nor is the truth always clever."
• "It helps to not confuse theological philosophers with evangelists. There is a difference but objectively neither better than the other: an evangelist's mission is to convert; a theological philosopher's mission is to build an understanding of a position."
• "To better understand God we must first shatter our own idea of God - maybe even day after day. Maybe he's too great to stay compressed in the human mind. Maybe he splits it wide open; this is why pretentious intellectualism so often fails to comprehend the concept of God: it is only accepting of what it can explain while in the process finding higher sources offensive. What we may confidently assert is that faith is the opening that allows God, this unpredictable, unseen power, to travel in and out of the mind without all the pains of confusion."
• "Just as some people may conceal their own sinfulness thus seeming better than the norm, others expose their own sinfulness thus seeming worse than the norm."
• "Those who live as though God sets the rules are not going by their own rules. That is the self-sacrifice, or selflessness, that peace more often than not requires. Those who insist on going by their own rules cannot make that sacrifice. They are the steady adherents of (global) conflict because they are forever fighting both themselves and others to do whatever they think that they want to do."
• "It starts off like climbing a tree or solving a puzzle - poetry, if nothing else, is just fun to write. But deeper into each and every piece, you no longer hesitate to call it work. It's passion. A poet's sense of lyrical accomplishment is then his food and water, his means of survival."
• "Oftentimes in reality, the genius is in the position of the antihero. Neither the good guys nor the bad guys really trust him because his truth is universal."
• "The hated man is the result of his hater's pride rather than his hater's conscience."
• "With too much pride a man cannot learn a thing. In and of itself, learning teaches you how foolish you are."
• "The idea that all souls are mortal is the only notion surely terminating love and all its forms."
• "Don't change your mind just because people are offended; change your mind if you're wrong."
• "Think outside the box? Indeed. But to add balance to that, one should not in the process forget what the inside of the box looks like as well. Those who are best at thinking outside the box do it not to puff themselves up, but to see how small they really are. As a contented fish in its fish tank appears to have a small, boring existence to us, imagine a larger, more perceptive kingdom (even by scientific taxonomy) to whom our contented existences may appear to be small and boring. This is where true creativity and massive perceptive abilities spawn a sense of intellectual humility; the kind which God adores."
• "I would say that introverts make some of the best international philosophers. The less common attribute of the introverted lifestyle - a close societal connection, as such a connection disappears or changes in relevance as the currents of the winds change - leaves too much room for one's own cultural bias. Instead, introverts tend to turn inward, the laboratory of being and all its forms. This is the most accurate study of the individual human being, which is in turn, rather than those affected by cultural limitations, the most universal reflection of human understanding and human behavior."
• "A common mistake we make is that we look for God in places where we ourselves wish to find him, yet even in the physical reality this is a complete failure. For example, if you lost your car keys, you would not search where you want to search, you would search where you must in order to find them."
• "We have better relationships with those who truly seek us rather than those sitting on the couch watching us move mountains trying to prove ourselves."
• "Genius, throughout history, has been found difficult to classify because it varies in amount: It's rare to find a genius in the context of the noun, but most people, if not all, have a bit of genius in them in the context of the adjective."
• "Some virtues, when they become fashions, also become exaggerated. Just because nobody likes a judgmental attitude does not mean that there isn't a sort of spoiled, self-righteous hypocrisy when one man obsessively commands other men not to judge without knowing the circumstances without himself, too, knowing their circumstances behind their judgments."
• "The writer's curse is that even in solitude, no matter its duration, he never grows lonely or bored."
• "Closed in a room, my imagination becomes the universe, and the rest of the world is missing out."
• "Humility is, in a sense, admitting how egotistical you are."
• "Even though artists of all kinds claim to put their hearts and souls into their works, it will only confuse you, for example, if you try to discern a painter by his paintings. His masterpiece may be the master because of its iridescence; it may display a hundred different perspectives through his single face."
• "Realizing the seriously ruthless, venomous habits and agendas of evil always instills a more fierce passion and longing for a closer God. Men, out of pride, may claim their own authorities over what constitutes good and evil; they may self-proclaim a keen knowledge of subjective morality through religion or science. But that is only if they are acknowledging the work of evil as a cartoon-like, petty little rain cloud in the sky that merely wants to dampen one's spirits. On the contrary, a man could be without a doubt lit with the strength, the peace, and the knowledge of the gods, his gods, but when or if the devils grow weary in unsuccessful attempts to torment him, they begin tormenting his loved ones, or, if not his loved ones, anyone who may attempt to grasp his philosophies. No matter how godly he may become, God is, in the end, his only hope and his only grace for the pressures built around him - it is left up to a higher authority and a more solid peace and a wider love to eclipse not just one's own evils but all evils for goodness to ultimately matter. If all men were gods, each being would dwell in a separate prison cell, hopeless, before finally imploding into nothingness."
• "I'm never proud of my old work. I always feel as though my skills have since improved."
• "Women show men beauty in things beyond their ambitions. Women tell men to stop and smell the roses."
• "When you aren't satisfied with what has already been done, make something better. That is the greatest responsibility and the true freedom of creativity. The freedom is in that it doesn't need to complain."
• "Joy, like love, is an impenetrable, God-given state of being. The distinctions between joy and happiness and love and affection are important ones under the notion that happiness is an 'iffy' emotion, a highly dependent feeling both aroused and destroyed by external conditions apart from God. And the distinction between love and affection is parallel to such."
• "Old words are reborn with new faces."
• "Christianity, like genius, is one of the hardest concepts to forgive. We hear what we want to hear and accept what we want to accept, for the most part, simply because there is nothing more offensive than feeling like you have to re-evaluate your own train of thought and purpose in life. You have to die to an extent in your hunger for faith, for wisdom, and quite frankly, most people aren't ready to die."
• "Sometimes a people lose their right to remain silent when pressured to remain silent."
• "Never rebel for the sake of rebelling, but always rebel for the sake of truth."
• "I'm a lion in a strange land."
• "The spirit of arrogance most definitely makes you shine. It paints a bright red target on your own forehead."
• "Credentials are like potential energy, the compliments of a name on paper, in documents, word of mouth, but faith is like kinetic energy, the motion and the force that which is witnessed. Hence in the end it is the faith rather than the credentials that really takes you places."
• "Great philosophers become immortal - they make undeniable impacts on culture."
• "It's not about whether or not someone is a bigot, but whether or not the argument which that someone is arguing is worth being a bigot about."
• "Deceit for personal gain is one of history's most recurring crimes. Man's first step towards change would be thinking, counter-arguing, re-thinking, twisting, straightening, perfecting, then believing every original idea he intends to make public before making it public. There is always an angle from which an absolute truth may appear askew just as there is always a personal emotion, or a personal agenda, which alienates the ultimate good of mankind."
• "Whenever you feel like feeling like a devil's advocate, Bible-thump. That, in a worldly world, is the great irony and satire of evangelism."
• "A rumor is a social cancer: it is difficult to contain and it rots the brains of the masses. However, the real danger is that so many people find rumors enjoyable. That part causes the infection. And in such cases when a rumor is only partially made of truth, it is difficult to pinpoint exactly where the information may have gone wrong. It is passed on and on until some brave soul questions its validity; that brave soul refuses to bite the apple and let the apple eat him. Forced to start from scratch for the sake of purity and truth, that brave soul, figuratively speaking, fully amputates the information in order to protect his personal judgment. In other words, his ignorance is to be valued more than the lie believed to be true."
• "Tolerance! The virtue that makes one bite his tongue so that he can tear out his hair."
• "Imagination doesn't always make you long for what you cannot have, but rather thrive in what you do not have."
• "Great artists are a little too gifted to be bound by boxes and labels, and in saying that, the label 'artist' is to be used lightly."
• "Love tames the benumbed beast. A man is put to use regarding a woman's physical safety, but a woman is put to use regarding a man's mental safety."
• "A young outcast will often feel that there is something wrong with himself, but as he gets older, grows more confident in who he is, he will adapt, he will begin to feel that there is something wrong with everyone else."
• "It is a noble responsibility to not back down when you know that you know that you know that you are right."
• "When you're the only sane person, you look like the only insane person."
• "Simplicity is a bliss that makes one comprehend."
• "To be truly positive in the eyes of some, you have to risk appearing negative in the eyes of others."
• "To ask, 'How do you do it?' is already starting off on the wrong foot. When reaching for the stars, there does not have to be a 'how' if there is a big enough 'why'."
• "The challenge of abating one with a genuine ego problem is to not try to put him down. Any and all antagonization, in his mind, is merely compensated for by his own descriptions: his feelings of persecution by the envious and his ideals of worth. Arguably, the genuine ego is more of a circumstantial defense mechanism rather than a steady arrogance in need of starvation."
• "You have to lift a person up before you can really put them in their place."
• "It's much easier on the emotions when one sees life as an experiment rather than a struggle for popularity."
• "Man is not, by nature, deserving of all that he wants. When we think that we are automatically entitled to something, that is when we start walking all over others to get it."
• "It's a good sign but rare instance when, in a relationship, you find that the more you learn about the other person, the more you continue to desire them. A sturdy bond delights in that degree of youthful intrigue. Love loves its youth."
• "Every time I create something, whether an idea or a work of art, initially, its supposed completion seems absolutely perfect to me. However the more I think about it, stare it down, the more it marinates in my soul over the hours, days, and weeks, the more flaws I start to find in it; and finally, the more I'm pressed to continue enhancing it. It essentially turns out that whatever thing a flawed and imperfect, human eye once thought was amazing begins to appear quite wretched. This is why, eternally, God cannot be impressed by mere talents or by mortal achievements. To perfect eyes, I imagine that great is not really that great; rather, humility is ultimately a human being's true greatness."
• "Discernment is the son of good judgment and the father of self-control. When mixed with an already clear conscience, the ability to read the true motives of a critic keeps one's conscience both clear and at ease."
• "The humble sinner will sometimes be interpreted as one of the filthiest in the eyes of man yet immersed in the eyes of God, and this is due to the volition of honesty regarding his own corruption."
• "A rebel adult often seems like a glorious savior, whereas a rebel child often seems like a little devil."
• "Everything at some point has been declared the root of all evil."
• "I am not here to merely argue about the perplexities regarding theism or philosophy, but to be a light to the world and to reach out to those who long to be a part of that light."
• "Christians walk as strangers in the world: They are untamed. They are free. To persevere with love, yet untamed by man, is often what leaves that open space for divine revelation when God so wills."
• "Intelligence entails a strong mind, but genius entails a heart of a lion in tune with a strong mind."
• "Oftentimes winning can become an addiction, whether good or bad, to the point where you would rather lose it all before you lose at all."
• "Thoughts are like burning stars, and ideas, they flood, they stretch the universe."
• "A sign of power in a man is not only when people follow what he suggests, but also when people make a conscious effort to do the exact opposite of what he suggests."
• "All great leaders find a sense of balance through their levels of reception. For instance, those who support a leader may soften him, those who ignore him may challenge him, and those who oppose him may stroke his ego."
• "To be honest, one can only feel glad that so many modern iconoclasts consider Christianity to be full of exceptionally hypocritical, religious zealots - it's biblically accurate and a prophecy fulfilled. The old smoke screen is one of Satan's favorite tricks. He conceals the authentic. He has a persistent strategy of targeting those who remind him of Christianity because he fears those who remind him of Christ."
• "I'd rather strive for the kind of interview where instead of me asking to introduce myself to society, society asks me to introduce myself to society."
• "Considering the notion that the spiritual battlefield is infinitely greater than the physical, perhaps God is more willing to bless with a sort of divine ecstasy those who see the devil as the enemy rather than those who see other people as the enemies."
• "When you're socially awkward, you're isolated more than usual, and when you're isolated more than usual, your creativity is less compromised by what has already been said and done. All your hope in life starts to depend on your craft, so you try to perfect it. One reason I stay isolated more than the average person is to keep my creativity as fierce as possible. Being the odd one out may have its temporary disadvantages, but more importantly, it has its permanent advantages."
• "Of all the major religions, or lack thereof, the atheist's is one of the best pretenders: his foundation for all existences, as well as moral behaviors for the permanent good of mankind, begins at science but ends at himself, the Napoleon complex of both intelligence and imagination. On the other hand the anti-theist wouldn't survive without a deity beyond himself to hunt. He doesn't pretend, he simply nullifies his own position."
• "Even if there are instances in which it can be mistook by onlookers, never fool yourself into using misunderstood genius as an excuse to be a fool."
• "Generally, there is a lot of truth value in stepping back, observing, then logically generalizing the extremes of what you see."
• "You can't let the truth bring out the worst and let it get the best of you."
• "I often ask myself, 'Who would Jesus vote for?' Then I start to think that he wouldn't vote at all; however, it would not be out of apathy or disinterest, but out of perfection and light. As a miracle worker, I think he would, by the power of God's teachings, the perseverance and the truth, influence in a modern sense whoever is put into office how to best serve his fellow men. One, like his skeptics, may find that impractical. But there is a message in that no man in power can slow the momentum of the will of God, and the miracles of his teachings will be forever victorious."
• "There's a difference between thinking you can't be wrong and having no regrets. Wrongness is what occurs prior to empiricism, in hindsight a counterpart of revelation, and revelation is nothing to regret."
• "Constantly stopping to explain oneself may expand into a frustrating burden for the rare individual, so ceasing to do so is like finally dropping the weights and sprinting towards his goals. Those who insincerely misunderstand, who intentionally distort the motives of a pure-intentioned individual, then, no longer have the opportunity to block his path; instead, they are the ones left to stand on the sidelines shouting frustratedly in the wind of his trail."
• "If I were to vote, I would intentionally vote for the goofiest candidate. It is my theory that when the people can outwit the leader, the more respected their voices will be."
• "Beyond all sciences, philosophies, theologies, and histories, a child's relentless inquiry is truly all it takes to remind us that we don't know as much as we think we know."
• "Soar with wit. Conquer with dignity. Handle with care."
• "Have nuts and be nuts."
• "A lack of illusion is golden, and it is quite possible that creativity is the highest form of intelligence. One might further develop oneself in the creative sense and, therefore, at times, find some degree of shame more so than pride when having always followed that of the safe and ever-praised academia."
• "The harder you fall, the heavier your heart; the heavier your heart, the stronger you climb; the stronger you climb, the higher your pedestal."
• "I think a lot of psychopaths are just geniuses who drove so fast that they lost control."
• "When most of the greatest individuals in history were misunderstood and you've spent so much of your own adult life misunderstood, you can't help but believe that the majority of people know very little worth knowing."
• "I don't pretend to know everything; I just only speak on matters I know I'll win."
• "Armed neutrality makes it much easier to detect hypocrisy."
• "The typical atheist rebels against God as a teenager rebels against his parents. When his own desires or standards are not fulfilled in the way that he sees fit, he, in revolt, storms out of the house in denial of the Word of God and in scrutiny of a great deal of those who stand by the Word of God. The epithet 'Heavenly Father' is a grand reflection, a relation to that of human nature."
• "As a writer of philosophy, it's good to ask oneself, 'Will I still believe this a week from now, or months, or even years?'"
• "In some cases, I am able to respect what so many call bigots. Such people have a more solid foundation for drawing their lines when it comes to the security of their ways and quite possibly the security of mankind. They rely on something that has worked to get man this far without placing ideals blindly driven by emotion first; they have a sure line and they say, 'No.' That, in a sense, is something I find to be highly respectable."
• "Whenever we want to combat our enemies, first and foremost we must start by understanding them rather than exaggerating their motives."
• "Oftentimes in a society when people of a certain type, whether individual or a group, are subconsciously portrayed by the media as abnormal, they also slowly, subconsciously become enemies of that society due to feelings of cultural guilt. Ultimately by this the inflated media is an enemy of its very own cause."
• "There is, after all, no moral difference between the bigot and the tolerator. They are from case to case positive or negative. One man is bigoted because he was given the sword of truth, another because he is angered in thoughtlessness; then, one man is tolerant because he was given the flag of peace, another because he is cowardly and wishes to hide all guilt."
• "The manlier you are, the harder it is to understand what a woman wants: there is not a hint of female brain in you."
• "Confidence turns into pride only when you are in denial of your mistakes."
• "When emerging from humble beginnings, those around you tend to underestimate your authenticity because they knew you before you were 'somebody'."
• "Popular culture is a place where pity is called compassion, flattery is called love, propaganda is called knowledge, tension is called peace, gossip is called news, and auto-tune is called singing."
• "For God to prove himself on demand, physically, would be a grave disappointment, and the strongest Christians should be considerably grateful that he chooses not to do so. The skeptic endlessly demands proof, yet God refuses to insult the true intelligence of man, the '6th sense', the chief quality, the acumen which distinguishes man from the rest of creation, faith."
• "I imagine that the intelligent people are the ones so intelligent that they don't even need or want to look 'intelligent' anymore."
• "If ever you feel like an animal among men, be a lion."
• "It turns out that indecision is a path itself; but figuratively, a vertical path - up or down - meaning it isn't always a fruitless path. One is forgotten, but the other is glorified. To be what they call 'middle-of-the-road' in most cases just means you have a hard time figuring out who between options is dumber. So quite often those who refused to decide were, after all, the bold individuals, the influential ones, the creative ones, those who snatched their own authority."
• "Let your confidence reflect your contentedness."
• "When your only regret is if anyone thinks you regret anything - that is the definition of conviction."
• "If you use a philosophy education well, you can get your foot in the door of any industry you please. Industries are like the blossoms on a tree while philosophy is the trunk - it holds the tree together, but it often goes unnoticed."
• "At first, they'll only dislike what you say, but the more correct you start sounding the more they'll dislike you."
• "As long as I am breathing, in my eyes, I am just beginning."
• "To share your weakness is to make yourself vulnerable; to make yourself vulnerable is to show your strength."
• "The pressure of adversity is the most powerful sustainer of accountability. It's as though everything you do is multiplied by 50 in order to surpass those with a head-start. I was never capable of slacking when at the threshold of failure."
• "There was a time when skepticism was an act of rebellion. Since to a degree I both believe in evolution and have faith, I can only conclude that, as prophesied, to have faith will someday be an act of rebellion."
  
• "Love is as simple as the absence of self given to another. God, when invited, fills the void of any unrequited love; hence loving is how one is drawn closer to God no matter its most horrific repercussions."
• "The whole war between the atheist and the theist comes down to this: the atheist believes a 'what' created the universe; the theist believes a 'who' created the universe."
• "Find a purpose to serve, not a lifestyle to live."
• "In the fashion industry, everything goes retro except the prices."
• "We are often taught to look for the beauty in all things, so in finding it, the layman asks the philosopher while the philosopher asks the photographer."
• "When you feel like you mean nothing to everyone for too long, you one day wake up with an urge to mean everything to as many people as possible. That is what inspires creativity. Maybe God would agree, hence creation."
• "Love may be harder to find in some people, but when they do love you know it must be something marvelous."
• "If it's true what is said, that only the wise discover the wise, then it must also be true that the lone wolf symbolizes either the biggest fool on the planet or the biggest Einstein on the planet."
• "It is easier for one to take risks and to chase his dreams with a mindset that he has nothing to lose. In this lies the immense passion, the great advantage of avoiding a materialistic, pleasure-filled way of life."
• "A pure heart does not demean the spirit of an individual, it, instead, compels the individual to examine his spirit."
• "It turns out that the men who ultimately, who unpretentiously value peace are willing to sacrifice their own peace of mind in order to render it. The question is, 'Who, between opposing forces, would do such a thing?' It seems only theoretical albeit true that men who accept an objective rather than subjective moral standard are, in a general sense, more capable of making such sacrifices for the sake of peace."
• "It's not about going around trying to stir up trouble. As long as you're honest and you articulate what you believe to be true, somebody somewhere will become your enemy whether you like it or not."
• "I find it a challenge to cooperate in a society where it's considered moral to critique a résumé yet immoral to critique morality."
• "A writer is one who communicates ideas and emotions people want to communicate but aren't quite sure how, or even if, they should communicate them."
• "With a hint of good judgment, to fear nothing, not failure or suffering or even death, indicates that you value life the most. You live to the extreme; you push limits; you spend your time building legacies. Those do not die."
• "Sometimes it takes a lowly, title-less man to humble the world. Kings, rulers, CEOs, judges, doctors, pastors, they are already expected to be greater and wiser."
• "The first ingredient to being wrong is to claim that you are right. Geniuses have a knack for raising new questions. Hence by the public they are either admired for their creativity or, even more commonly so, detested for disturbing the daily peace of mind."
• "In God's eyes, a man who teaches one truth and nothing else is more righteous than a man who teaches a million truths and one lie."
• "The biggest challenge after success is shutting up about it."
• "Companionship is a foreign concept to some people. They fear it as much as the majority of people fear loneliness."
• "To be sincere, or maybe just believable, about helping others through adversity, one has to have experienced it himself first. This is my strangest prayer, and in this I can never regret a thing. It is a kind of self-sacrificial love, one of life's greatest components."
• "There is a greater Christian faith than one which settles for the temporal happiness, and that is the augmentation of faith. The more faithful you become, the harder the obstacles get; but the harder the obstacles get, the tougher your spine grows; and the tougher your spine grows, the less dependent you are on man's approval. I came to know this about Christianity when valuing faith before comfort."
• "The artist lives to have stories to tell and to learn to tell them well."
• "Most men either compromise or drop their greatest talents and start running after, what they perceive to be, a more reasonable success, and somewhere in between they end up with a discontented settlement. Safety is indeed stability, but it is not progression."
• "Beware: open-mindedness will often say, 'Everything is permissible except a sharp opinion.'"
• "The motive behind criticism often determines its validity. Those who care criticize where necessary. Those who envy criticize the moment they think that they have found a weak spot."
• "Just because something isn't a lie does not mean that it isn't deceptive. A liar knows that he is a liar, but one who speaks mere portions of truth in order to deceive is a craftsman of destruction."
• "I would rather a romantic relationship turn into contempt than turn into apathy. The passion in the extremities make it appear as though it once meant something. We grow from hot or cold, but lukewarm is the biggest insult."
• "I am a fan of overdoing something, but not running it into the ground. They are complete opposites with only a fine line separating them."
• "If you want to find the real competition, just look in the mirror. After awhile you'll see your rivals scrambling for second place."
• "Listen to God with a broken heart. He is not only the doctor who mends it, but also the father who wipes away the tears."
• "When it comes to judging individuals, I do not like remarks such as 'too good to be true.' They speak as though one is rewarding the nature of evil. Yet, ironically, we still wonder where all the good people have gone."
• "Liberalism, contrary to popular belief, is facing backward in considering the injustice of its ancestors. Conservatism, contrary to popular belief, is facing forward in considering the psychology of its descendants. Definitively, it seems in the modern world that neither side really knows which direction it's facing, and men of the sharpest judgment are simply turned off from picking either of the poisons."
• "A man does not have to feel less than human to realize his sin; oppositely, he has to realize that he gets no special vindication for his sin."
• "Never hide things from hardcore thinkers. They get more aggravated, more provoked by confusion than the most painful truths."
• "In order to share one's true brilliance one initially has to risk looking like a fool: genius is like a wheel that spins so fast, it at first glance appears to be sitting still."
• "It is not true that everyone is special. It is true that everyone was once special and still possesses the ability to recover it."
• "Seeing the glass as half empty is more positive than seeing it as half full. Through such a lens the only choice is to pour more. That is righteous pessimism."
• "I feel as though whenever I create something, my Mr. Hyde wakes up in the middle of the night and starts thrashing it. I sometimes love it the next morning, but other times it is an abomination."
• "Many people in a rather reckless context claim to 'just tell it like it is'. In actuality, nobody really stresses what one says so much as the motive behind what one says; hence, he is merely blowing hot air and detracting from 'what is'."
• "When good people consider you the bad guy, you develop a heart to help the bad ones. You actually understand them."
• "These days when Christians bicker they exaggerate passion into a legalistic belief and prosperity into a lukewarm belief."
• "Wise men are not pacifists; they are merely less likely to jump up and retaliate against their antagonizers. They know that needless antagonizers are virtually already insecure enough."
• "I would rather be an artist than a leader. Ironically, a leader has to follow the rules."
• "Tension, in the long run, is a more dangerous force than any feud known to man."
• "I am thankful when I am hungry because then I know that when I eat, the food will taste better. Life has taught me that my true contentment rests in hope, and the pleasure itself is secondary. It is self-awareness, not happiness, that maintains peace."
• "Grudges are for those who insist that they are owed something; forgiveness, however, is for those who are substantial enough to move on."
• "We men are fascinated by the things we don't really understand. It gives us something to think and talk about: like females, they drive us nuts."
• "From recovery to rags and rags to recovery symbolizes art - a perfect compilation of human imperfections."
• "There's no need to curse God if you're an ugly duckling. He chooses those strong enough to endure it so that they can guide others who've felt the same."
• "Everyone judges constantly: positively judging one person is the same as negatively judging everyone else; it is to say that that person is superior in some sense."
• "Psychobabble attempts to redefine the entire English language just to make a correct statement incorrect. Psychology is the study of why someone would try to do this."
• "The role of genius is not to complicate the simple, but to simplify the complicated."
  
• "One does not have to be a philosopher to be a successful artist, but he does have to be an artist to be a successful philosopher. His nature is to view the world in an unpredictable albeit useful light."
• "I'm often painted as the bad guy, and the artistic part of me wants to hand out the brush."
• "I will never deny that life isn't fair. It seems as though when a woman leaves a man she is strong and independent, but when a man leaves a woman he is a pig and a jerk."
• "Like crying wolf, if you keep looking for sympathy as a justification for your actions, you will someday be left standing alone when you really need help."
• "In an extroverted society, the difference between an introvert and an extrovert is that an introvert is often unconsciously deemed guilty until proven innocent."
• "Because there are hundreds of different ways to say one thing, I, being a writer, songwriter, and poet, speak childishly and incoherently. In speech there is so much to decide in so little time."
• "If you build the guts to do something, anything, then you better save enough to face the consequences."
• "I believe in evolution in the sense that a short-tempered man is the successor of a crybaby."
• "An exceedingly confident student would in theory make a terrible student. Why would he take school seriously when he feels that he can outwit his teachers?"
• "The greater ignorance towards a country is not ignoring what its politicians have to say, it is ignoring what the inmates in its prisons have to say."
• "Love is without a doubt the laziest theory for the meaning of life, but when it actually comes a time to do it we find just enough energy to over-complicate life again. Any devil can love, whom he himself sees as, a good person who has treated him well, but to love also the polar opposite is what separates love from fickle emotions."
• "To say that one waits a lifetime for his soulmate to come around is a paradox. People eventually get sick of waiting, take a chance on someone, and by the art of commitment become soulmates, which takes a lifetime to perfect."
• "Few can admit that, to the audience, public trials bring more entertainment than they bring justice. We act like vultures: vultures sit and wait for something to die as we sit and wait for someone to suffer, even when the conflict is truly of no concern to us. That makes them sheer entertainment. Public trials are the modern gladiator."
• "Authors can write stories without people assuming that they are autobiographies, but songwriters and poets are often considered to be the characters in their works. I like Michelangelo's vision, 'I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.'"
• "In the land where excellence is commended, not envied, where weakness is aided, not mocked, there is no question as to how its inhabitants are all superhuman."
• "Love begets wisdom, thus it is, as often misconceived, more than vain layers of tenderness; it is inherently rational and comprehensive of the problem within the problem: for instance, envy is one of the most excused sins in the media of political correctness. Those you find most attractive, or seem to have it all, are often some of the most insecure at heart, and that is because people assume that they do not need anything but defamation."
• "Labeled fools to the world are geniuses to the cosmos."
• "Doubt is a question mark; faith is an exclamation point. The most compelling, believable, realistic stories have included them both."
• "Emotion is always multiplied in the art of a person who doesn't really show much emotion. It once expanded deep within his hidden soul, and following the downplay his audience is blown away."
• "Wisdom is nothing more than confirmed imagination: just because one did not study for his exam does not mean that he should leave it blank."
• "Everyone claims to be okay with freedom of religion, but the moment you mention God there is a strange tension that fills the air. If there was a 6th sense, that would be it."
• "Drinking is such a necessity to human life that people cannot fathom an individual who, like a child confined to a church pew, gets little enjoyment out of it and would rather do other things."
• "Divinity for the sake of the simple-minded is beautiful. Those theological assertions you write, say, or live by that you later feel foolish about, it means God still lives in you enough to tell you that they were indeed foolish. By mistakes you know you are alive."
• "Every man has a specific skill, whether it is discovered or not, that more readily and naturally comes to him than it would to another, and his own should be sought and polished. He excels best in his niche - originality loses its authenticity in one's efforts to obtain originality."
• "Persistence. Perfection. Patience. Power. Prioritize your passion. It keeps you sane."
• "I claim neither liberalism nor conservatism - one tends to be airheaded while the other tends to be brickheaded."
• "Being nice merely to be liked in return nullifies the point."
• "There is more to joy than looking only for affirmation; refusing to be challenged is the only bigotry."
• "A lonely day is God's way of saying that he wants to spend some quality time with you."
• "You get hit the hardest when trying to run or hide from a problem. Like the defense on a football field, putting all focus on evading only one defender is asking to be blindsided."
• "Those who speak of progression but are afraid of change are self-repressed and therefore unable to reach any further than their eyes can already see."
• "Seemingly minor yet persistent things penetrate the mind over time making it difficult to ever realize the impact; hence, though quite unfortunate, the most dangerous forms of corruption are those that are subtle and below the radar."
• "Every job from the heart is, ultimately, of equal value. The nurse injects the syringe; the writer slides the pen; the farmer plows the dirt; the comedian draws the laughter. Monetary income is the perfect deceiver of a man's true worth."
• "God favors men and women who delight in being made worthy of happiness before the happiness itself."
• "If the entire world sought to make itself worthy of happiness rather than make itself happy, then the entire world would be happy."
• "To seek greatness is the only righteous vengeance."
• "Women rescue men just as much as, if not more than, men rescue women."
• "In the age of technology there is constant access to vast amounts of information. The basket overflows; people get overwhelmed; the eye of the storm is not so much what goes on in the world, it is the confusion of how to think, feel, digest, and react to what goes on."
• "I do not care about happiness simply because I believe that joy is something worth fighting for."
• "When a poet digs himself into a hole, he doesn't climb out. He digs deeper, enjoys the scenery, and comes out the other side enlightened."
• "The theistic philosopher has a tendency to devalue insufficient worldviews, ideologies, and quite often common sense for the greater good, and in such cases, one should not be discouraged when seen as a bad guy. If he stresses over man's perception of a righteous heart, then he has given his heart to man."
• "Feel what it's like to truly starve, and I guarantee that you'll forever think twice before wasting food."
• "Good works is giving to the poor and the helpless, but divine works is showing them their worth to the One who matters."
• "When it comes to world news, attitude is what marks the distinction between justice and vengeance. Justice is pure, but vengeance brings more ruin."
• "If you have to say or do something controversial, aim so that people will hate that they love it and not love that they hate it."
• "The ultimate story of success: When a nobody, who has never once in his entire life known the feeling of being remembered or respected, suddenly snaps and becomes a world dictator. On one hand it sounds just, but on the other, it illustrates the reason why a prosperity message has and needs its limitations."
• "In essence I find that the foundation of modern conservatism is driven by a clinging to God in fear of the world, whereas the foundation of modern liberalism is a clinging to the world in fear of God; albeit, the true foundation should be one's clinging to God in fear of God."
• "I don't feel productive unless I'm creating something. If I were to become a millionaire through strategies that have already been used by many, I would feel poorer than poor, as if my potential and my purpose were left unfulfilled."
• "Faithfulness imparts God's reason for all circumstances. No matter what the world says, losing is no longer an option."
• "Love is the most talked about idea in the world, and the biggest mystery in the world is how many individuals can honestly live its true nature."
• "Everyone has a sense of humor. If you don't laugh at jokes, you probably laugh at opinions."
• "On romance, I remembered the girls who were strict, those who cared enough to stab me in the front whenever they felt I deserved it. Flatterers, in a sense, can be selfish - they merely want to see an increase in their number of friends."
• "There is a master way with words which is not learned but is instead developed: a deaf man develops exceptional vision, a blind man exceptional hearing, a silent man, when given a piece of paper..."
• "When a man is penalized for honesty he learns to lie."
• "As individuals die every moment, how insensitive and fabricated a love it is to set aside a day from selfish routine in prideful, patriotic commemoration of tragedy. Just as God is provoked by those who tithe simply because they feel that they must tithe, I am provoked by those who commemorate simply because they feel that they must commemorate."
• "I generally hate reading persuasive books; but I hate my ignorance even more, so I force myself to do it. I enjoy reading aphorisms. Persuasive books often talk too much to really say anything memorable, whereas selling an idea through the wit, subtlety, and perception of a good aphorism may challenge in a single sentence."
• "I do not read a lot of books. I read people. There is no better witness than one to himself. The rest is hearsay."
• "I usually make sure that I need my own advice as much as the next person. Hypocritical or not, that is how I am certain that it is valuable to at least one or more persons."
• "A fear of weakness only strengthens weakness."
• "There's nothing more contagious than the laughter of young children; it doesn't even have to matter what they're laughing about."
• "If love is blind, then maybe a blind person that loves has a greater understanding of it."
• "A solid answer to everything is not necessary. Blurry concepts influence one to focus, but postulated clarity influences arrogance."
• "The devil's happy when the critics run you off."
• "To be heroic is to be courageous enough to die for something; to be inspirational is to be crazy enough to live a little."
• "It is never ridicule, but a compliment, that knocks a philosopher off his feet. He is already positioned for every possible counter-attack, counter-argument, and retort...only to find a big bear hug coming his way."
• "A man who goes into a restaurant and blatantly disrespects the servers shows a strong discontent with his own being. Deep down he knows that restaurant service is the closest thing he will ever experience to being served like a king."
• "Songwriting and poetry are so commonly birthed from underdogs because one can make even the ugliest situations admirable, or more beautiful than the beautiful situations - they are the most graceful media in which the lines of society are distorted."
• "In a general sense, I admit to valuing the worldviews of men under the age of 40 and women over the age of 30."
• "I like solitude. It is when you truly hear and speak your natural, unadulterated mind, and out comes your most stupid self as well as your most intelligent self. It is when you realize who you are and the extents of the good and the evils which you are capable of."
• "The logic behind patriotism is a mystery. At least a man who believes that his own family or clan is superior to all others is familiar with more than 0.000003% of the people involved."
• "I write about adversity, I praise adversity, not to be pessimistic, but rather to strengthen myself. The more familiar that you are with it, the less likely you are to have a breakdown when it occurs. You become more reflective of its purpose, you understand God's reason for it, and are then able to make the best of everything that you are handed. The darkness is only frightening after constant sunshine."
• "It is the philosophers, theologians, and evangelists who are said to be filled with pride and bigotry due to the strong convictions that they represent. On the contrary, teachings can be either taken or dismissed; whereas voting is the only thing the average person can do to force everyone to live how they would prefer. A simple vote is among the largest yet most acceptable forms of bigotry, and that is because people play the card only when they feel that in doing so it conveniences themselves."
• "I would rather have strong enemies than a world of passive individualists. In a world of passive individualists nothing seems worth anything simply because nobody stands for anything. That world has no convictions, no victories, no unions, no heroism, no absolutes, no heartbeat. That world has rigor mortis."
• "Any fool can do something cool and look cool, but it takes skill to make something uncool cool again."
• "Disasters work like alarm clocks to the world, hence God allows them. They are shouting, 'Wake up! Love! Pray!'"
• "I am not sure if women are attracted to genius. Can you imagine the wise wizard winning the woman over the gallant swordsman? It seems rather otherworldly in more ways than one."
• "I cannot encourage any fabrication even for the sake of making people feel good. If I were to fabricate consciously and knowingly, I would not only be ordaining myself their enemy, but also ordaining myself God's enemy."
• "When you have wit of your own, it's a pleasure to credit other people for theirs."
• "Easily mistaken, it is not about a love for adversity, it is about knowing a strength and a faith so great that adversity, in all its adverse manifestations, hardly even exists."
• "I think there is a song out there to describe just about any situation."
• "The barrier during self-improvement is not so much that we hate learning, rather we hate being taught. To learn entails that the knowledge was achieved on one's own accord - it feels great - but to be taught often leaves a feeling of inferiority. Thus it takes a bit of determination and a lot of humility in order for one to fully develop."
• "What man ever openly apologizes for slander? It is not so much a feeling of slander as it is that of a massive lie, a misdeed not only to the slandered but also to those manipulated in the process. He has made them all, every one, his enemies, thereupon he is so overwhelmed with guilt that he will deny it until his grave."
• "Showing a lack of self-control is in the same vein granting authority to others: 'Perhaps I need someone else to control me.'"
• "Drunken men give some of the best pep talks."
• "Happiness is good, but well-overrated: what we hate most are the very motivators that put us in gear. A man drifts along with little to contribute until something agitates him enough to make a difference, whether for himself or for his communities."
• "I often find that people confuse inner peace with some sense of insensibility whenever something goes wrong. In such cases inner peace is a permit for destruction: The unyielding optimist will pretend that the forest is not burning either because he is too lazy or too afraid to go and put the fire out."
• "God's relationship with man does not work in a way in which man stumbles and then God has to drop what he is doing in order to lift him up; rather, man stumbles so that God can lift him up. Hence it is utterly impossible to truly diminish his glory."
• "When you're truly awesome, you know that it's actually a burden and wish day after day to be relieved of such a curse. Think of about 95% of the superheroes."
• "God tests, but he does not tempt."
• "A poet should be so crafty with words that he is envied even for his pains."
• "Whenever I think of something but can't think of what it was I was thinking of, I can't stop thinking until I think I'm thinking of it again. I think I think too much."
• "I am very self-aware that I can be hard-headed, but I delight in learning the hard way. Experience paradoxically develops the raw type of wisdom."
• "The only activity a cynic will find contagious is yawning, that is, with other people, at other people."
• "How is it that some celebrities, whom the average person would believe to have all the popularity a human being could want, still admit to feeling lonely? It is quite naive to assume that popularity is the remedy for loneliness. Loneliness does not necessarily equal physical solitude, it is the inability to be oneself and rightfully represented as oneself."
• "The faithful man perceives nothing less than opportunity in difficulties. Flowing through his spine, faith and courage work together: Such a man does not fear losing his life, thus he will risk losing it at times in order to empower it. By this he actually values his life more than the man who fears losing his life. It is much like leaping from a window in order to avoid a fire yet in that most crucial moment knowing that God will appear to catch you."
• "When a man has a gift in speaking the truth, brute aggression is no longer his security blanket for approval. He, on the contrary, spends most of his energy trying to tone it down because his very nature is already offensive enough."
• "With a philosophy education, one can infuriate his peers, intimidate his date, think of obscure, unreliable ways to make money, and never regret a thing."
• "The only thing more frustrating than slanderers is those foolish enough to listen to them."
• "One of the greatest gifts from God is the eternal perspective. It is a level of fearlessness, a level of understanding where one can experience even emotional harmony with God."
• "The older you get, the more you understand how your conscience works. The biggest and only critic lives in your perception of people's perception of you rather than people's perception of you."
• "Senses of humor define people, as factions, deeper rooted than religious or political opinions. When carrying out everyday tasks, opinions are rather easy to set aside, but those whom a person shares a sense of humor with are his closest friends. They are always there to make the biggest influence."
• "After awhile you realize that putting your actions where your mouth is makes you less likely to have to put your money where your mouth is."
• "Watching people hurt breaks my heart, but anger cracks me up. People say funny things when they are angry."
• "It's not at all hard to understand a person; it's only hard to listen without bias."
• "I am told that I take too kindly to strangers, but I still cannot convince myself that fear is any different than hate."
• "Simply minding one's own business is more offensive than being intrusive. Without ever saying a word one can make a person feel less-than."
• "I think that I am too warm to negatively judge individuals, yet I am cold enough to negatively judge humanity."
• "My love life is a tragedy. That is a poet's dream, to have a story so capturing that it's worthy enough to be re-enacted in front of an audience, but it would be lying to say that after awhile you don't grow weary of a juggled heart and, at last, want to snatch it down for a solid relationship."
• "Confidence is like a dragon where, for every head cut off, two more heads grow back."
• "Telling an introvert to go to a party is like telling a saint to go to Hell."
• "What does it mean to be 'out of someone's league'? The only real case of being out of someone's league is the relationship between God and a man, and even that is unfailing. We all have something of equal value to offer one another. When at first it is not as obvious, it must be fought for, and that makes it even more valuable. We worry so much about who someone is from the start that we completely ignore who, together, we can become before we finish."
• "What is hard work? It takes strength, energy, and stress to truly care about others enough to place oneself last, but it is easy to wrap oneself up and selfishly scramble on the heads of others."
• "You are evidence of your mother's strength, especially if you are a rebellious knucklehead and regardless she has always maintained her sanity."
• "I like finding problems because I like solving problems. Nothing is more depressing to me than cheerfully sweeping things under the rug."
• "I only seem negative to the fortunate. That's because I show the less fortunate that they aren't less fortunate after all."
• "My mind is more stimulated watching children's shows than political news. The former brings back all the basic, undeniable truths that may then be built upon; the latter is flooded with biased drivel thus giving me this strange feeling that I did my mind a huge disservice."
• "Everyone has their own ways of expression. I believe we all have a lot to say, but finding ways to say it is more than half the battle."
• "Learning isn't acquiring knowledge so much as it is trimming information that has already been acquired."
• "The power of hope! Even a lack of ambition can, for a time, pay off as a necessary facet, as long as hope outweighs it."
• "What is a genius? A person who demands little to nothing from others, but is often found extremely difficult to have around."
• "The common man prays, 'I want a cookie right now!' And God responds, 'If you'd listen to what I say, tomorrow it will bring you 100 cookies.'"
• "Self-righteousness is much like a spiritual egocentricity. It constitutes a secular type of love that thrives under conditionality, one in which is only existent after an individual meets the adopted standards of the condemner; oppositely, unconditional love is a holy love."
• "Ultimate prosperity is one's value within. It takes a man of depth, morality, and charm to be envied yet without a sign of wealth or romance. A passion to prove such inner worth is his permission to achieve whatever he desires."
• "To me it seems that too many young women of this time share the same creed. 'Live, laugh, love, be nothing but happy, experience everything, et cetera et cetera.' How monotonous, how useless this becomes. What about the honors of Joan of Arc, Beauvoir, Stowe, Xena, Princess Leia, or women that would truly fight for something other than just their own emotions?"
• "Creative people are often found either disagreeable or intimidating by mediocrities."
• "An over-indulgence of anything, even something as pure as water, can intoxicate."
• "I try to have my own definitions of happiness and success, and I would rather make paths before taking paths."
• "Whether angry, happy, or sad, the emotions always seem to triple when dealing with those who mean the most to you."
• "A lack of common sense usually ends in some heroic feat, much like the soldier who dives onto the grenade so that others may live."
• "Man was designed in a way in which he must eat in order to give him a solid reason to go to work everyday. This helps to keep him out of trouble. God is wise."
• "An encouraged person will eventually get his drive from encouragement; he becomes more dependent. A person that never really receives encouragement learns to move out of spite; he becomes more independent."
• "Tell me that the purpose of life is to have fun, and without a care in the world I'll begin wreaking havoc on everything I pass. Now that's what I call pure, honest fun."
• "Bad luck with women is a determined man's road to success. For every affliction, he makes, out of indignation, yet another advancement in order to exceed the man that the woman chose over him. This goes to show that great men are made great because they once learned how to fight the feeling of rejection."
• "If a man cannot understand the beauty of life, it is probably because life never understood the beauty in him."
• "Vivid simplicity is the articulation, the nature of genius. Wisdom is greater than intelligence; intelligence is greater than philosobabble."
• "There is such a thing as righteous judgment, but it seems that lately the word 'judgment' has become a curse word, period. The issue isn't whether or not we're insightful enough to avoid being judgmental, but whether or not we're secure enough to accept being judged. It is inevitable for every conscious human being to judge. It may spring from insight and experience and sincerity, and in such cases, it is quite beneficial on the receiving end."
• "The best ideas will eat at you for days, maybe even weeks, until something, some incident, some impulse, triggers you to finally express them."
• "I once sought validation from and compared my views to those of legendary thinkers; eventually, I started feeling a sense of authority and began refuting them when appropriate."
• "To be a philosopher, just reverse everything you have ever been told...and have a sense of humor doing it."
• "Time and time again does the pride of man influence his very own fall. While denying it, one gradually starts to believe that he is the authority, or that he possesses great moral dominion over others, yet it is spiritually unwarranted. By that point he loses steam; in result, he falsely begins trying to prove that unwarranted dominion by seizing the role of a condemner."
• "It always seems as though the definition of love will remain debatable by an opinionated world."
• "Absurdity is the ecstasy of intellectualism."
• "Everyone pretends to be 'free thinkers', but few individuals pass the line into expressive territories that may be detrimental to their own social well-being."
• "I would rather my descendants have greater abilities and a greater knowledge of the love of Christ than I do, much like standing on one's shoulders in order to get a clearer view of the valley."
• "Peace is more of an internal settlement rather than what is visible on the external."
• "In a way, and in my mind, I don't want to have succeeded; it implies finished work. If I make one masterpiece and not another, then I feel as though I'm sliding downhill."
• "For the believer, humility is honesty about one's greatest flaws to a degree in which he is fearless about truly appearing less righteous than another."
• "I always make sure that the world will prove me right. It gives me the freedom to contradict myself."
• "Christ delves far beyond the means of superficiality, not simply because of his immaculate love, but also because he considers the distinct cases of each individual rather than withholding a broadened perception by use of stereotypes."
• "When I look at a person, I see a person - not a rank, not a class, not a title."
• "I'm convinced that most men don't know what they believe, rather, they only know what they wish to believe. How many people blame God for man's atrocities, but wouldn't dream of imprisoning a mother for her son's crime?"
• "True rebels hate their own rebellion. They know by experience that it is not a cool and glamorous lifestyle; it takes a courageous fool to say things that have not been said and to do things that have not been done."
• "The more one aggressively displays his anger, the more others grow insensitive to his anger. Its lack of value will no longer receive sincere responses."
• "To be acceptable is for one to ignore his weakness while knowing his strength, to cover the scar even though it's always there, however, to be impossible is for one to see his weakness as, not an adversary, but the cherry on top of his strength, to rearrange the scar so that it compliments his features."
• "Pride and power fall when the person falls, but discoveries of truth form legacies that can be built upon for generations."
• "All individuals have moral deficiencies, and when introducing these to reality one not only strengthens himself but also the confidence of others in the human exigency for Christ due to a reflection throughout the body of Christ."
• "In the philosophical dialect, a cynic takes an insult as a compliment since opposition is already his style."
• "Faith, in its most correct form, never removes responsibility; it removes fear of responsibility. The results are complete opposites with the greater saying, 'God's will is my delight.'"
• "It has always seemed that a fear of judgment is the mark of guilt and the burden of insecurity."
• "It often occurs that pride and selfishness are muddled with strength and independence. They are neither equal nor similar; in fact, they are polar opposites. A coward may be so cowardly that he masks his weakness with some false personification of power. He is afraid to love and to be loved because love tends to strip bare all emotional barricades. Without love, strength and independence are prone to losing every bit of their worth; they become nothing more than a fearful, intimidated, empty tent lost somewhere in the desert of self."
• "As Aristotle said, 'Excellence is a habit.' I would say furthermore that excellence is made constant through the feeling that comes right after one has completed a work which he himself finds undeniably awe-inspiring. He only wants to relax until he's ready to renew such a feeling all over again because to him, all else has become absolutely trivial."
  
• "People more easily welcome the man that was crafty about hiding his own immoralities while willfully rejecting the man known to have said or to have committed something immoral."
• "One may not always know his purpose until his only option is to monopolize in what he truly excels at. He grows weary of hearing the answer 'no' time and time again, so he turns to and cultivates, monopolizes in his one talent which others cannot possibly subdue. Then, beyond the crowds of criticism and rejection, the right people recognize his talent - among them he finds his stage."
• "Usually, I cannot just voluntarily sit down in deep thought and begin writing nor would I want to. Nearly everything that comes together, comes together in pieces, out of life."