Quotable Quotes #14

Political correctness is just tyranny with manners. I wish for you the courage to be unpopular. Popularity is history’s pocket change. Courage is history’s true currency. – Charlton Heston

Life is tough, but it’s tougher when you’re stupid. – John Wayne

Who’s the more foolish: the fool, or the fool who follows him? – Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope

Courage is being scared to death but saddling up anyway. – John Wayne

Human beings can always be relied upon to exert, with vigor, their God-given right to be stupid. – Dean Koontz

Sometimes, to be silent is to be most eloquent. – Charlton Heston

Nothing gives us courage more readily than the desire to avoid looking like a damn fool. –  Dean Koontz

“The best diplomat that I know is a fully-loaded phaser bank.” — Lt. Cdr. Montgomery Scott in “A Taste of Armageddon”

Maybe it’s good if God gives you something to think about every so often. – Charlton Heston

I really believe that everyone has a talent, ability, or skill that he can mine to support himself and to succeed in life. – Dean Koontz

Talk low, talk slow, and don’t talk too much. – John Wayne

More Francesca Battistelli Songs

A long, long time ago, a post called “Songs of Light” went up on this blog. It featured various songs by up-and-coming artist Francesca Battistelli. She is a young woman, married, with three children. And she loves God, writing songs that give Him glory – and help to make me happy. So, in this post, I have collected some more of her songs for you to enjoy at your leisure.

Certainly, her music does not appeal to every listener. If her songs are not to your taste, I am sorry for that. If you like her music as much as I do, hurrah!

Either way, God go with you, readers!

Until next time!

The Mithril Guardian

Motion of Mercy

Run to Jesus

Something More

Good to Know

Trampoline

Constant

You Never Are

Choose to Love

Don’t Miss It

Hold Out For Love

Find Rest

So Long

Emily (It’s Love)

Strangely Dim

In Your Eyes

Holy Spirit

Quotable Quotes #13

Whoever wishes to hold the fortress of contemplation must first train in the camp of action. – Pope St. Gregory the Great

The “digital highway” is a street teeming with people who are often hurting, men and women looking for salvation or hope.” – Pope Francis

To be interested in the changing seasons… is a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring. – George Santayana, philosopher

I’m always very fearful when academics get ahold of comedy. Comedy is such a clear thing – people laugh or they don’t laugh. – Lorne Michaels, Saturday Night Live co-creator

Failure seldom stops you. What stops you is the fear of failing. – Jack Lemmon

To love is to see light. – Victor Hugo

Beauty awakens the soul to act. – Dante Alighieri

How glorious a greeting the sun gives the mountains! – John Muir

The most beautiful things in the world are not seen nor touched. They are felt with the heart. – Helen Keller

Nothing is more beautiful than the loveliness of the woods before sunrise. – George Washington Carver

You should take your job seriously but not yourself. That is the best combination. – Dame Judi Dench

America was built on courage, on imagination, and unbeatable determination to do the job at hand. – Harry S. Truman

Beauty is not caused. It is. – Emily Dickinson

Beauty is whatever gives joy. – Edna St. Vincent Millay

Not being funny doesn’t make you a bad person. Not having a sense of humor does. – David Rakoff, author

Quotable Quotes #12

I don’t need a friend who changes when I change and who nods when I nod; my shadow does the much better. – Plutarch, Greek essayist

Love is love’s reward. – John Dryden

There are several good protections against temptations, but the surest is cowardice. – Mark Twain

Life is too important to be taken seriously. – Oscar Wilde

Love is a canvas furnished by nature and embroidered by imagination. – Voltaire, French philosopher

The silliest woman can manage a clever man; but it needs a very clever woman to manage a fool. – Rudyard Kipling

It is easier to be wise for others than for ourselves. – Francois de la Rochefoucauld

Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth. – Buddha

It is not length of life but depth of life. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. – Oscar Wilde

I hate quotations. Tell me what you know. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Quotable Quotes #8

Experience does not err.  Only your judgments err by expecting from her what is not in her power. – Leonardo da Vinci

It is great wealth to a soul to live frugally with a contented mind. – Lucretius, Roman poet-philosopher

Do not worry as you have

built your castles in the air.

They are where they should be.

Now put the foundations under them. – Henry David Thoreau

Happiness is like those palaces in fairy tales whose gates are guarded by dragons: we must fight in order to conquer it. – Alexandre Dumas, French playwright and novelist

A man’s face is his autobiography. A woman’s face is her work of fiction. – Oscar Wilde

I wasted time, and now doth time waste me. – William Shakespeare

The hottest love has the coldest end. – Socrates

Friendship is a single soul dwelling in two bodies. – Aristotle

Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together. – George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), English novelist

Simplicity in character, in manners, in style; in all things the supreme excellence is simplicity. – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, American poet

Not all those who know their minds know their hearts as well. – Francois de la Rochefoucauld

Quotable Quotes #7

Choose to Love

Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd. – Voltaire

Nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced. – John Keats

Happiness and moral duty are inseparably connected. – George Washington

Ignorance is the curse of God; knowledge is the wing wherewith we fly to heaven. – William Shakespeare

I am accustomed to sleep and in my dreams to imagine the same things that lunatics imagine when awake. – René Descartes

Be true to your work, your word, and your friend. – Henry David Thoreau, American author

How far that little candle throws its beams!

So shines a good deed in a naughty world. – William Shakespeare

You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation. – Plato

Life well spent is long. – Leonardo da Vinci, Italian artist

A leader is a dealer in hope. – Napoleon Bonaparte

The innocent and the beautiful have no enemy but time. – William Butler Yeats, Irish poet

A true friend is the greatest of all blessings, and that which we take the least care of all to acquire. – Francois de la Rochefoucauld

If we did all the things we are capable of, we would literally astound ourselves. – Thomas A. Edison

Songs of Light

There is a lot of talk flying around these days – and perhaps it has always been there – about how stories have to be full of depth and emotion. Most people equate such stories with “Dark Fiction,” such as The Twilight Saga, Red Dragon, Purge, The Walking Dead, etcetera ad infinitum.

As you, my readers, know by now, these are not stories in which I am interested. I am not interested in stories that drag the audience into the depths of darkness and leave them lying there, moaning and wailing in pain.

I prefer stories that raise the audience up, make them fly in their souls since every human but Warren Worthington III (a.k.a. the X-Men’s Angel) lacks wings.

Yes, there is danger – or rather, risk – in these stories. The Avengers might have lost to Loki in the film, but they fought anyway. Luke may have been killed by Emperor Palpatine before Anakin saved him, Frodo might not have been saved, and on and on, ad infinitum.

But in these stories there is always light after the darkness. Day follows night, rest follows pain, and sorrow eases and eventually fades, to be replaced by the good memories life has to offer us.

I recently began listening to a current singer whose work inspires this feeling of flight in me. She is fairly popular, I understand. Listening to her songs, I can see why. She is Francesca Battistelli, a young lady “who is making it cool” to sing about the Bible and God. Again. Once this was not so strange an occurrence.

I realize that not everyone will enjoy these songs, but it is not in me to keep something I enjoy entirely to myself. Something shared becomes twice as enjoyable as something encountered singularly. So here are the particular songs Mrs. Battistelli performs which I enjoy.

“Free to Be Me”

“This Is the Stuff”

“Beautiful, Beautiful”

“Worth It”

“Angel By Your Side”

“When the Crazy Kicks In”

“Hands of God”

“He Knows My Name”

“Giants Fall”

“We Are the Kingdom”

“Write Your Story”

 

Until next time,

The Mithril Guardian