Criss Jami Quotes - Page 9

You can never make someone like something they don't like, but you can always help them to better understand it.

When everyone believes they are the life coaches, who are the players?

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.

Fresh, solid ideas feel like gifts to writers, therefore every morning is Christmas.

Mankind, in all his lusts, punishes himself. The gods have to do very little.

What's simple is that everything good comes from God, and everything bad comes from man. Where it gets complicated is that everything seemingly good but ultimately bad comes from man, and everything seemingly bad but ultimately good comes from God.

Humility is by far the most spiritual virtue of the lot. The only way by which one may cease obsessing over himself is to wholly step outside his flesh. But who could do this by himself? And who would really want to under his natural pretense? And even if somehow he could and he succeeded, would not it be artificial? Would not he seem far too aware of his own talents of achieving humility for it to be such? Alternatively, he would need a distraction, something else to love; it is not that the Humbleman thinks poorly of himself, nor highly for that matter, but rather he does not think of himself at all - and this is because he is too busy loving something or someone else to do it. For the humility of this kind 'rears its head' as the most love-driven and free, spiritual of virtues; whereas its opposite, pride, the most self-imprisoning human vice.

Anger's like a battery that leaks acid right out of meAnd it starts from the heart 'til it reaches my outer me

People, generally, are equally insecure. They just show it (or hide it) differently.

Doubt is a question mark; faith is an exclamation point. The most compelling, believable, realistic stories have included them both.

Time and time over it is the ones who try a little too hard to be innovative rebels - and for the sheer glory of being considered innovative rebels - who then turn out not quite as innovative or as rebellious as they would like to think they are.

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.

Thoughts are like burning stars, and ideas, they flood, they stretch the universe.

The hard part about one being tough yet meek is the illusion of being a punching bag.

Always seek justice, but love only mercy. To love justice and hate mercy is but a doorway to more injustice.

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.

An insincere critic of a sincere person never wins.

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.

If I were to believe in God enough to call him a murderer, then I might also believe enough that he, as a spirit, exists beyond death; and therefore only he could do it righteously. For the physical being kills a man and hatefully sends him away, whereas God, the spiritual being, kills a man and lovingly draws him nigh.

April Fools' is the only day to take people seriously.

As for the belief that humanity is mostly good, Secular humanism, when in that alignment, always presumes the existence of a higher power, or some god-like influence on man. Because it then becomes the belief that people are generally good and should be protected from the wiles of religion, as though this dark, vague and ignorant force once fell from the heavens, latched onto the purer hearts and minds of men and women, and, in all its forms, controlled and polluted the whole of human history. He says, 'When we defeat religion, humanity will be free.' But, if he were duly consistent, if he were really at all as secular as he claims, he might as well admit to what is actually an underlying brand of nihilistic cynicism: 'When we defeat humans, humanity will be free.

The way of the consumerist culture is to spend so much energy chasing happiness that it has none left to be happy.

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.

It is never just disagreement but always intellectual dishonesty that is the apologist's worst enemy. And its apprentice is ignorance.

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.

Look for the person everyone hates, and love them.

I'm never proud of my old work. I always feel as though my skills have since improved.

I sit and ponder my existence: how I'm here, what put me here in these thoughts, these feelings, birthed from a timeless sleep, what it felt like, or rather the lack thereof, to not have been and now to 'be', and suddenly, I realize how absurd I am to exist, the fragility in my understanding of existence; I then wonder why the supernatural, the thought of other beings, of God or of gods, must be distinctly absurd - by which I am no longer sure. 'If I exist and I have made myself absurd to me, then why not they exist while merely believed absurd by me?' Perhaps it is true that in a wandering head, one full of wonders, the natural becomes supernatural and the supernatural becomes preternatural (or rational within the sights of discovery and explanation), just as the return home after a life-long journey feels, for a moment, foreign after the many experiences.

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.

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.

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.

The idea that all souls are mortal is the only notion surely terminating love and all its forms.

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.

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.

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 is not a God of confusion, although at times one's judgment, for a period, may become clouded in the mi(d)st of one's growth process. I stopped fooling myself into thinking that Christ is always for the cool kids and never for those upright and uptight religious people everybody hates.

Any fool can do something cool and look cool, but it takes skill to make something uncool cool again.

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.

Creative people are often found either disagreeable or intimidating by mediocrities.

The hope is indeed that some will experience and believe: The purpose of a number of spiritual gurus is to demonstrate to God-fearing men faux spirituality.

Sanity for anyone is pretty much out of the question, as both the saint and the sinner appear only equally insane: the saint appears it for actually believing in a place of eternal torment; the sinner, for deciding to risk going to that place of eternal torment.

There are no keys to success - only tools.

Ingredients to success: know what you do well, know what to do well, and know someone who's swell.

To seek greatness is the only righteous vengeance.

I won't be stuck in traffic 'til I see how rugged my path isAnd right now I'm loving how fast my troubles are fastingNo they don't bother me oh realizing I'm psychopathicA wild beast, baby I'm gladly running afterYes a thing called peace outlasting any madnessThe devil fears me oh he's feelingLike a fragment of a fractionNo he won't come near me'Cause his hat trick's out of practice

When you're appeasing too much, you might be egotistically over-estimating everyone's need for your approval.

If you assume that the new - and simply because it's new - is always to be better than the old, chances are you've never known anything valuable.

You are evidence of your mother's strength, especially if you are a rebellious knucklehead and regardless she has always maintained her sanity.

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.

Growing up I often wondered how the world would be today if, since the beginning of human life, every person acted as I did.

In the fashion industry, everything goes retro except the prices.

Rebuke without love is abuse. But, a love that would never rebuke? I dare to admit that that, too, would be a kind of abuse.

Nothing frustrates people more than a cocky guy who's still winning.

Grudges are for those who insist that they are owed something; forgiveness, however, is for those who are substantial enough to move on.

Jealousy from a love affair is something even God can admit.

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.

Companionship is a foreign concept to some people. They fear it as much as the majority of people fear loneliness.

...And maybe one day you will wake up as an infant in a completely different universe, and your entire life thus far was just one big dream.

These days when Christians bicker they exaggerate passion into a legalistic belief and prosperity into a lukewarm belief.

Narcissists often feign oppression because narcissists always feel entitled.