Colossians 2:8 (NIV)
See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ.

If God exists to please us, then shouldn't we always be pleased?

~ Max Lucado

It's Not About Me

What can this incessant craving mean, unless there was once a happiness belonging to man, of which only the faintest traces remain?

~ Blaise Pascal,

scientist & philosopher

We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

~ C.S. Lewis

Thought is the blossom; language the bud; action the fruit behind it.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

In life, you begin to get where you're going even before you know where you are.

~ Anonymous

The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.

~ Albert Einstein

To be vested with enormous authority is a fine thing; but to have the on-looking world consent to it is a finer.

~ Mark Twain

(A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court)

Suffering

Pope John Paul II, who has ruled the Roman Catholic church for more than 26 years—knows that in his public experience of suffering lies enormous power. More than 20 years ago, after recovering from the pistol shot that almost took his life in front of St. Peter's in 1981, John Paul declared that suffering, as such, is one of the most powerful messages in Christianity. "Human suffering evokes compassion," he wrote in 1984, "it also evokes respect, and in its own way it intimidates."

In 1994, as age and infirmity began to incapacitate John Paul publicly, he told his followers he had heard God and was about to change the way he led the church. "I must lead her with suffering," he said. "The pope must suffer so that every family and the world should see that there is, I would say, a higher gospel: the gospel of suffering, with which one must prepare the future."

"'Tis mad idolatry to make the service greater than the god . . . "

~ William Shakespeare

(Troilus and Cressida)