How seldom we weigh our neighbor in the same balance with ourselves.
Thomas A KempisRead
He that seeks here any other thing but simply God and the salvation of his soul, will find nothing but trouble and sorrow.
Interpretation
Pursuing anything other than spiritual fulfillment can lead to distress.
This quote suggests that the primary objective in life should be the pursuit of God and the salvation of one's soul. Any distraction from this spiritual focus can result in negative experiences and emotional turmoil, highlighting the importance of prioritizing spiritual well-being over worldly desires.
In practice
A pastor might use this quote in a sermon to emphasize spiritual priorities over materialism.
How seldom we weigh our neighbor in the same balance with ourselves.
He will easily be content and at peace, whose conscience is pure.
Trust not to your feelings for whatever they might be now, they will quickly be changed towards some other thing.
Jesus has many who love the kingdom of God, but few who bear a cross. He has many who desire His comfort, but few who desire His suffering. All want to rejoice with him, but few are willing to suffer for Him. He writes; there are many who admire his miracles, but there are few who follow in the humiliation of the cross.
Anyone who thinks hard work will never hurt you has never had to pay to have it done. Jesus now has many lovers of his Heavenly Kingdom, but few bearers of his cross.
He has great tranquillity of heart who cares neither for the praises nor the fault-finding of men. He will easily be content and pacified, whose conscience is pure. You are not holier if you are praised, nor the more worthless if you are found fault with. What you are, that you are; neither by word can you be made greater than what you are in the sight of God.
I was rather literary in college—one year I wrote a series of very solemn and obvious editorials for the 'Yale News.'—and now I was going to bring back all such things into my life and become again that most limited of all specialists, the 'well-rounded man.' This isn’t just an epigram—life is much more successfully looked at from a single window, after all.
Nothing ever gets settled in this town. a seething debating society in which the debate never stops, in which people never give up, including me. And so that's the atmosphere in which you administer.
Perhaps it’s that you can’t go back in time, but you can return to the scenes of a love, of a crime, of happiness, and of a fatal decision; the places are what remain, are what you can possess, are what is immortal. They become the tangible landscape of memory, the places that made you, and in some way you too become them. They are what you can possess and in the end what possesses you.
Dreaming is a philogenetically older mode of thought.
A dairymaid can milk cows to the glory of God
Pride does not wish to owe and vanity does not wish to pay.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.