Unfortunate human tendency:
We tend both to feel virtuous about sins we are not guilty of and to condemn fiercely weaknesses we are unaware of in ourselves.
~John White, Eros Defiled
Meanderings of Yore
I meander between different genres of lit--lit which often happens to be from days of yore--and enjoy posting from many of said meanderings.
Posts tagged human condition
C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves:
No sooner do we believe that God loves us than there is an impulse to believe that He does so, not because He is Love, but because we are intrinsically lovable. The Pagans obeyed this impulse unabashed; a good man was ‘dear to the gods’ because he was good. We, being better taught, resort to subterfuge. Far be it from us to think that we have virtues for which God could love us. But then, how magnificently we have repented! As Bunyan says, describing his first and illusory conversion, ‘I thought there was no man in England that pleased God better than I.’ Beaten out of this, we next offer our own humility to God’s admiration. Surely He’ll like that? Or if not that, our clear-sighted and humble recognition that we still lack humility. Thus, depth beneath depth and subtlety within subtlety, there remains some lingering idea of our own, our very own, attractiveness. It is easy to acknowledge, but almost impossible to realise for long, that we are mirrors whose brightness, if we are bright, is wholly derived from the sun that shines upon us. Surely we must have a little—however little—native luminosity? Surely we can’t be quite creatures?
Malcolm Muggeridge, from Long Journey Home by Os Guinness:
The first thing I remember about the world—and I pray it may be the last—is that I was a stranger in it. This feeling, which everyone has in some degree … is at once the glory and desolation of homo sapiens.
Lee Iacocca, from Long Journey Home by Os Guinness:
Here I am in the twilight years of my life, still wondering what it’s all about. … I can tell you this, fame and fortune is for the birds.
Russell’s emptiness and longing:
The root of the whole thing is loneliness. I have a kind of physical loneliness, which almost anybody can more or less relieve, but which would be only fully relieved by a wife and children. Beyond that, I have a very internal and terrible spiritual loneliness… I have dreamed of a combination of spiritual and physical companionship, and if I had the good fortune to find it, I could have become something better than I shall ever be.
~Bertrand Russell, from Long Journey Home by Os Guinness
Based on his experience of the racial situation in the American South, early 1930s:
The separation of whites from blacks in the southern states really does make a rather shameful impression. In railways that separation extends to even the tiniest details. I found that the cars of the negroes generally look cleaner than the others. It also pleased me when the whites had to crowd into their railway cars while often only a single person was sitting in the entire railway car for negroes. The way the southerners talk about the negroes is simply repugnant, and in this regard the pastors are no better than the others. I still believe that the spiritual songs of the southern negroes represent some of the greatest artistic achievements in America. It is a bit unnerving that in a country with so inordinately many slogans about brotherhood, peace, and so on, such things still continue completely uncorrected.
~Dietrich Bonhoeffer, from Bonhoeffer by Eric Metaxas
On the racial situation in the American South, early 1930s:
In Washington I lived completely among the Negroes and through the students was able to become acquainted with all the leading figures of the negro movement, was in their homes, and had extraordinarily interesting discussions with them. … The conditions are really rather unbelievable. Not just separate railway cars, tramways, and buses south of Washington, but also, for example, when I wanted to eat in a small restaurant with a Negro, I was refused service.
~Dietrich Bonhoeffer, from Bonhoeffer by Eric Metaxas
G. K. Chesterton, William Blake (bio):
We all feel the riddle of the earth without anyone to point it out. The mystery of life is the plainest part of it. The clouds and curtains of darkness, the confounding vapors, these are the daily weather of this world. Whatever else we have grown accustomed to, we have grown accustomed to the unaccountable. Every stone or flower is a hieroglyphic of which we have lost the key; with every step of our lives we enter into the middle of some story which we are certain to misunderstand.
Dr. Seuss, Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are?:
It’s a troublesome world. All the people who’re in it
are troubled with troubles almost every minute.
You ought to be thankful, a whole heaping lot
for the people and places you’re lucky you’re not!
