Scaredcrow

Montaigne

2012-01-31T16:54:00.000-08:00

So many goodly citties ransacked and razed; so many nations destroyed and made desolate; so infinite millions of harmless people of all sexes, states and ages, massacred, ravaged and put to the sword; and the richest, the fairest and the best part of the world topsiturvied (topsy-turvy), ruined and defaced for the traffick of Pearles and Pepper: Oh, mechanicall victories, oh base conquest. Montainge

Thomas Jefferson

2012-01-30T19:35:00.000-08:00

...it is not too soon to provide by every possible means that as few as possible shall be without a little portion of land. The small landholders are the most precious part of the state...

Isaiah 5:8

2012-01-30T19:34:00.000-08:00

Woe to those who add house to house
and join field to field
until everywhere belongs to them
and they are the sole inhabitants.

E.P. Roe

2012-01-04T19:37:00.001-08:00

Nothing can conduce more to happiness and prosperity than multitudes of rural homes. In such abodes you will not find Socialists, Nihilists, and other hare-brained reformers who seek to improve the world by ignoring nature and common sense. Possession of the soil makes a man conservative, while he, at the same time, is conserved.

Wendell Berry

2012-01-04T19:22:00.000-08:00

Industrialism begins with technological invention. But agrarianism begins with
givens: land, plants, animals, weather, hunger and the birthright knowledge of
agriculture. Industrialists are always ready to ignore, sell, or destroy the past in
order to gain the entirely unprecedented wealth, comfort, and happiness
supposedly to be found in the future. Agrarian farmers know that their very
identity depends on their willingness to receive gratefully, use responsibly and
hand down intact an inheritance, both natural and cultural, from the past.
Agrarians understand themselves as the users and caretakers of some things they
did not make, and of some things that they cannot make.

Virgil

2012-01-04T18:07:00.000-08:00

I saw a man,
An old Cilician, who occupied
An acre or two of land that no one wanted,
A patch not worth the ploughing, unrewarding
For flocks, unfit for vineyards; he however
By planting here and there among the scrub
Cabbages or white lilies and verbena
And flimsy poppies, fancied himself a king
In wealth, and coming home late in the evening
Loaded his board with unbought delicacies.

Thoreau

2012-01-04T15:04:00.000-08:00

Take long walks in stormy weather or through deep snows in the fields and woods, if you would keep your spirits up. Deal with brute nature. Be cold and hungry and weary.”

“You must converse much with the field and woods, if you would imbibe such health into your mind and spirit as you covet for your body

"Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains

The Civilized Savage

2012-01-03T14:49:00.001-08:00

In 1835, the French writer Alexis de Tocqueville wrote of the great English manufacturing city
Manchester: “From this foul drain the greatest stream of human industry flows out to fertilize the
whole world. From this filthy sewer pure gold flows. Here humanity attains its most complete
development and its most brutish; here civilization makes its miracles, and civilized man is
turned back almost into a savage.”

2012-01-03T13:23:00.000-08:00

For, truly, the man who does not know how to die, does not know how to live. John Ruskin

2011-12-20T14:00:00.001-08:00

"Art is not a thing; it is a way." ~Elbert Hubbard (1856-1915)

2011-12-01T14:42:00.000-08:00

Is the American church a lost cause? Does anyone want to live a sacrificial life that would bring glory to God? Has the concept of immediate self-gratification through material goods completely usurped God's call upon us to be holy? Have we lost our footing and gone adrift? MR

2011-11-29T17:49:00.000-08:00

Rationalism is always based on irrationalism
Irrationalism is always based on rationalism which is always based on irrationalism
Relativism is always based on rationalism which is always based on irrationalism.

Without an infinite person in the belief system, philosophy becomes chaotic. MR

2010-09-30T14:50:00.001-07:00

Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers is like trying to tell the time by watching the second hand of a clock.
Ben Hecht

Journalism largely consists of saying 'Lord Jones is Dead' to people who never knew that Lord Jones was alive.
G. K. Chesterton

2010-09-30T14:45:00.000-07:00

To read a newspaper is to refrain from reading something worthwhile. The first discipline of education must therefore be to refuse resolutely to feed the mind with canned chatter.
Aleister Crowley

2010-04-29T11:29:00.000-07:00

Knowledge and virtue are impossible without transcendence. MR

2010-04-23T15:14:00.000-07:00

Richard Weaver; Ideas Have Consequences 1948

Hysterical optimism will prevail until the world again admits the existence of tragedy, and it cannot admit the existence of tragedy until it again distinguishes between good and evil. Hope or restoration depends upon recovery of the “ceremony of innocence”, of that clearness of vision and knowledge of form which enables us to sense what is alien or destructive, what does not comport with our moral ambition. The time to seek this is now, before we have acquired the perfect insouciance of those who prefer perdition. For, as the course goes on, the movement turns centrifugal; we rejoice in our abandon and are never so full of the sense of accomplishment as when we have struck some bulwark of our culture a deadly blow.

Diogenes of Sinope

2010-04-10T21:02:00.000-07:00

"I've seen Plato's cups and table, but not his cupness and tableness."

2010-04-07T15:18:00.001-07:00

"Evangelism and theology for the most part go separate ways, and the result is great loss for both. When theology is not held on course by the demands of evangelistic communication, it grows abstract and speculative, wayward in method, theoretical in interest and irresponsible in stance. When evangelism is not fertilized, fed and controlled by theology, it becomes a stylized performance seeking its effect through manipulative skills rather than the power of vision and the force of truth. Both theology and evangelism are then, in one important sense, unreal, false to their own God-given nature; for all true theology has an evangelistic thrust, and all true evangelism is theology in action."
J.I. Packer

"Evangelism that does not lead to purity of life and purity of doctrine is just as faulty and incomplete as an orthodoxy which does not lead to a concern for, and communication with, the lost."
Francis Schaeffer

2010-04-07T14:48:00.000-07:00

Every once in a while in my discussions someone asks how I can believe in the Trinity. My answer is always the same. I would still be an agnostic if there was no Trinity, because there would be no answers. Without the high order of personal unity and diversity as given in the Trinity, there are no answers.
(Francis A. Schaeffer, He Is There and He Is Not Silent, Ch. 1)

God did not need to create; God does not need the universe as the universe needs Him. Why? Because we have a full and true Trinity. The Persons of the Trinity communicated with each other and loved each other before the creation of the world.

This is not only an answer to the acute philosophic need of unity in diversity, but of personal unity and diversity. The unity and diversity cannot exist before God or be behind God, because whatever is farthest back is God. But with the doctrine of the Trinity, the unity and diversity is God Himself -- three Persons, yet one God. That is what the Trinity is, and nothing less than this.
(Francis A. Schaeffer, He Is There and He Is Not Silent, Ch. 1)

Nobody else, no philosophy, has ever given us an answer for unity and diversity. So when people ask whether we are embarrassed intellectually by the Trinity, I always switch it over into their own terminology -- unity and diversity. Every philosophy has this problem, and no philosophy has an answer. Christianity does have an answer in the existence of the Trinity. The only answer to what exists is that He, the triune God, is there.
(Francis A. Schaeffer, He Is There and He Is Not Silent, Ch. 1)

Seneca

2010-03-21T16:15:00.000-07:00

“As the soil, however rich it may be, cannot be productive without cultivation, so the mind without culture can never produce good fruit.

2010-03-21T16:11:00.001-07:00

Cultural norms are absorbed through the pores of our skin; they find there way into the cerebral regions and burn synaptic ruts that cause un-analyzed thoughts to form in our consciousness. These lazy thoughts are scattered throughout our minds in numerous heaps that may smell like dung (or is it the smell of decay), but one becomes accustomed to the odor or at least becomes distracted from it by the incessant necessity of consumption and amusement; a necessity that has been created from our cultural norms.

It is the rare individual that attempts to sort through the piles as it is difficult and unfamiliar work, and it may lead to rational and creative thought that may be viewed as insane. MR

2009-11-27T16:35:00.001-08:00

Holding an instrument in your hand that has been shaped and worn by an individual that lived a hundred years prior to your existence is like traveling through time and shaking hands with an unknown friend. MR

Dostoevsky quotes, shamelessly gathered from Anastasia's favorite quotes.

2009-11-24T16:16:00.000-08:00

"The darker the night, the brighter the stars,
The deeper the grief, the closer is God!"
— Fyodor Dostoevsky (Crime and Punishment)

"It is not the brains that matter most, but that which guides them — the character, the heart, generous qualities, progressive ideas."
— Fyodor Dostoevsky

"Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth."
— Fyodor Dostoevsky (Crime and Punishment)

Rober Louis Stevenson

2009-11-20T16:08:00.000-08:00

Quiet minds cannot be perplexed or frightened, but go on in fortune or misfortune at their own private pace, like a clock during a thunderstorm.

Oliver Wendell Holmes

2009-11-20T16:03:00.000-08:00

Many people die with their music still in them. Why is this so? Too often it is because they are always getting ready to live. Before they know it, time runs out.

Theodore Roosevelt

2009-11-20T15:54:00.000-08:00

To waste, to destroy our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them amplified and developed.

2009-11-16T10:55:00.001-08:00

Civilization is not inherited; it has to be learned and earned by each generation anew; if the transmission should be interrupted for one century, civilization would die, and we should be savages again.

--Will and Ariel Durant

2009-11-16T06:59:00.000-08:00

Examine each question in terms of what is ethically and aesthetically right, as well as what is economically expedient. Aldo Leopold

Idustrialism would never take the time to ask whether something was ethically and aesthetically correct; time is money and money always trumps both ethics and aesthetics. MR

Nathaniel Hawthorne

2009-10-15T09:14:00.000-07:00

There is so much wretchedness in the world, that we may safely take the word of any mortal professing to need our assistance; and, even should we be deceived, still the good to ourselves resulting from a kind act is worth more than the trifle by which we purchase it.

Life is made up of marble and mud.

Abraham Kyper

2009-10-03T11:53:00.001-07:00

“ No single piece of our mental world is to be
hermetically sealed off from the rest, and there is
not a square inch in the whole domain of our human
existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all,
does not cry: ‘Mine!’”

Aldo Leopold

2009-09-29T18:47:00.001-07:00

A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.

2009-09-14T14:19:00.000-07:00

History flows on a current of consequences derived
from philosophical thought. You may deny or ignore the
constant current, but if there is not a proper understanding of its ethos,
you may well become nothing more than a
droplet of water in a cataract fall. MR

2009-08-15T21:43:00.000-07:00

There is an emptiness in consumption
A repulsion in glut. MR

2009-05-29T12:49:00.000-07:00

Nature does not point to chance but to an artist of the highest order.

Turretin

2009-05-28T21:36:00.000-07:00

God cannot be wrested from nature without totally confusing and destroying it. Nature proves the being of God. Since she proclaims that she not only is, but is from another and could not be without another. For if it is certain and indubitable that out of nothing, nothing is made and nothing can be the cause of itself, it is also certain that we must grant some first and unproduced being from whom all things are, but who is himself from no one.

2009-05-28T15:10:00.000-07:00

Absolutes are not the cause of the woes experienced by the human race, (whether corporate or personal); absolutes are what enables us to identify what is immoral and then hopefully we attempt to bring about change.

Tolerance does not lead to a more just culture; it only looks the other way in the face of great evil.

Those who claim that moral absolutes do not exist are using borrowed capitol to support their position and thus are without support.

Poe

2009-05-28T13:38:00.000-07:00

   The breeze, the breath of God, is still,
     And the mist upon the hill
     Shadowy, shadowy, yet unbroken,
     Is a symbol and a token.
     How it hangs upon the trees,
     A mystery of mysteries!

I'll Take My Stand

2009-02-09T10:40:00.000-08:00

Industrialism is the economic organization of the collective American society. It means the decision of society to invest its economic resources in the applied sciences. But the word science has acquired a certain sanctitude. It is out of order to quarrel with science in the abstract, or even with the applied sciences when their applications are made subject of criticism and intelligence. The capitalization of the applied sciences has now become extravagant and uncritical; it has enslaved our human energies to a degree now clearly felt to be burdensome. The apologists of industrialism do not like to meet this charge directly; so they often take refuge in saying that they are devoted to simple science. They are really devoted to the applied sciences and to practical production. Therefore it is necessary to employ a certain skepticism even at the expense of the Cult of Science, and to say, it is an Americanism, which looks innocent and disinterested, but is not either.

2009-02-01T20:07:00.000-08:00

Faith and reason are not to be viewed as antithetical to each other. Blind faith is as stated, lacking any reason and not worthy to be followed, despite any personal intuitions or emotions. But faith can be reasonable, it can complete reason and bring our reason into harmony with something larger than ourselves. Lacking faith can produce shallowness, bitterness and despondency.

Leonardo da Vinci

2009-01-29T19:06:00.001-08:00

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”

Plotinus

2009-01-24T15:56:00.000-08:00

the Absolute "has its center everywhere and its circumference nowhere" Plotinus

An interesting thought but the its needs to be personified.

Henri-Frederic Amiel

2009-01-22T12:10:00.000-08:00

"The great artist is the simplifier.

"The man who has no refuge in himself, who lives, so to speak, in his front rooms, in the outer whirlwind of things and opinions, is not properly a personality at all. He floats with the current, who does not guide himself according to higher principles, who has no ideal, no convictions--such a man is a mere article of furniture--a thing moved, instead of a living and moving being--an echo, not a voice. The man who has no inner life is the slave of his surroundings, as the barometer is the obedient servant of the air at rest, and the weathercock the humble servant of the air in motion.

"The highest function of the teacher consists not so much in imparting knowledge as in stimulating the pupil in its love and pursuit. To know how to suggest is the art of teaching."

2009-01-14T14:31:00.001-08:00

In the world of technology, which is a creation of man, it is not the Creator whom one first encounters; rather man encounters only himself.

- Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger

Syllogism

2009-01-14T14:21:00.000-08:00

1. Whenever technology does not humanize it dehumanizes (diminishes man). 2. Whatever diminishes man diminishes his capacity to receive God. 3. Therefore bad technology is spiritually alienating and destructive to the soul. Dan Nicoles

I am not sure if the first proposition is completly true; could not the technology be neutral?
But I would most heartedly agree that any technology that becomes an impediment to serving or receiving God is bad technology and that would account for much of our current technology.

Wendell Berry

2009-01-12T13:59:00.000-08:00

Listen to carrion -- put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.

2009-01-11T11:01:00.000-08:00

“I have lived through much, and now I think I have found what is needed for happiness. A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books, music, love for one’s neighbor-such is my idea of happiness. And then, on top of all that, you for a mate, and children, perhaps-what more can the heart of man desire?”

---from "Family Happiness" by Leo Tolstoy

Wendell Berry

2009-01-11T10:56:00.000-08:00

Throughout the five-hundred years since Columbus’s first landfall in the Bahamas, the evangelist has walked beside the conqueror and the merchant, too often blandly assuming that his cause was the same as theirs. … The certified Christian seems just as likely as anyone else to join the military-industrial conspiracy to murder Creation

2009-01-11T10:49:00.000-08:00

Things are in the saddle, and ride mankind.
R.W.E.

Picture of a Factory Village 1833

2009-01-11T10:41:00.000-08:00

For liberty our fathers' fought
Which with their blood, they dearly bought,
The factory System sets at nought.
A slave at morn, a slave at eve,
It dothe my inmost feelings grieve;
The blood runs chilly from my heart,
To see fair Liberty depart;
And leave the wretches in their chains,
To feed a vampire from their veins.
Britain's curse is now our own;
Enough to damn a King and Throne.

Thomas Mann

John Ruskin

2009-01-05T11:51:00.000-08:00

You must either make a tool of the creature, or a man of him. You cannot make both.

He sees in the universal desire to make money … the great and fatal evil of the times, and rebels entirely against all the complex social and political arrangements which have been constituted into a system to that end. He holds that to rely on manufactures for greatness is to lean upon a broken reed, and that England must live upon herself through agriculture if ever she would return to a healthy condition of existence … By those who have not bowed the knee to the modern Baal he will be gratefully remembered as one preaching in the wilderness the abandonment of the grosser things of life and the realisation of the Ideal.”

Eric Sloane

2008-12-26T17:47:00.000-08:00

A few days ago I walked along the edge of the lake and was treated to the crunch and rustle of leaves with each step I made. The acoustics of this season are different and all sounds, no matter how hushed, are as crisp as autumn air.

Booker T. Washinton

2008-12-25T12:09:00.001-08:00

"No race can prosper till it learns there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem."

Dorothy Sayers

2008-12-25T12:08:00.001-08:00

"A society in Which consumption has to be artificially stimulated in order to keep production going is a society founded upon waste and trash, and such a society is a house built on sand".

2008-12-19T10:39:00.001-08:00

I sought the Lord, and afterward I knew
He moved my soul to seek Him, seeking me.
It was not I that found, O Saviour true,
No, I was found of Thee.

Thou didst reach forth thy hand and mine enfold;
I walked and sank not on the storm-vexed-sea,-
'Twas not so much that I on thee took hold,
As thou, dear Lord on me.

I find, I walk, I love, but, O the whole
Of love is but my answer, Lord, to Thee;
For thou wert long beforehand with my soul,
Always thou lovedst me.

Thoreau

2008-12-19T08:13:00.000-08:00

I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself than this incessant business.

Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify.

Leo Tolstoy

2008-12-10T17:25:00.000-08:00

In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.

2008-12-10T14:47:00.000-08:00

A performance by the Horsemen Gospel Quartet during the End Times Bible Conference was cut short when 300 dispensationalists in the audience interpreted it as a sign of the Apocalypse and ran screaming for their lives.

Eric Sloane

2008-12-10T14:05:00.001-08:00

Perhaps one of the greatest changes in American building and farming philosophy has been the abandonment of the enthusiasm for permanence.

Randall Jarrell

2008-12-03T09:51:00.000-08:00

Soon we shall now everything that the 18th century did not know, and nothing it did, and it will be hard to live with us.

Thoreau

2008-11-25T08:25:00.000-08:00

Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.

Americans

2008-11-17T10:20:00.000-08:00

Are Americans so involved in progress, speed, competitveness, consumption, commercialism and entertaining ourselves to death, that we are unable to truly live and enjoy life?
Are we too busy worshiping the creation that we have forgotten the Creator?
Have we forgotten that we are creatures who owe homage to Someone else?
Are we in awe of anything?

Aldo Leopold

2008-11-11T21:44:00.001-08:00

“To me an ancient cottonwood is the greatest of trees because in his youth he shaded the buffalo and wore a halo of pigeons, and I like a young cottonwood because he may some day become ancient. But the farmer’s wife (and hence the farmer) despises all cottonwoods because in June the female tree clogs the screens with cotton. The modern dogma is comfort at any cost.”

Is Industrialism Immoral?

2008-11-11T16:10:00.000-08:00

Industrialism is a philosophy based upon an idea that resources have no limits and that our ability to consume has no limits. I believe this idea to be naive and narcissistic ; but is it immoral?
Is it immoral to consciously deplete resources and to degrade creation without making a return for future generations? Is it immoral to destroy cultures for temporal gain?

It is not a sin to be naive but it is to be narcissistic, materialistic, greedy and destructive.

Donald Davidson

2008-11-10T06:11:00.001-08:00

'If painting and sculptures are made for the purpose of being viewed in the carefully studied surroundings of art galleries, they have certainly lost their intimate connection with life. What is a picture for, if not to put on one's own wall?...The proposition is as absurd as this: Should we eat our meals regularly from crude, thick dishes like those used in Greek restaurants, but go on solemn occasions to a restaurant museum where somebody's munificence would permit us to enjoy a meal on china of the most delicate design? The truly artistic life is surely that in which the aesthetic experience is not curtained off but is mixed up with all sorts of instruments and occupations pertaining to the round of daily life.

Eric Sloane

2008-11-08T10:36:00.000-08:00

Farm life offers the complete satisfaction of knowing that each day's work has been truly productive, a joy scarce in present times. Yet strangely enough, the early American farmer's greatest satisfaction came not from his daily chores, but in his ability to make provisions for the future and an awareness of his part in fashioning the nation to come. He equipped his home with far heavier foundations than were necessary. He built his barn to last for centuries and he laid a rail fence to survive ten generations. He built stone walls that have lasted so long that they are now a permanent part of the landscape. None of these things are done now, nor do we often consider doing them

2008-10-19T17:48:00.000-07:00

Mankind, especially Americans in the electronic age, have an endless capacity for distraction. Distraction relieves us of the burden of seriousness, self-examination, seeking meaning and from having to think about any one thing for an extended amount of time.

Pleasure is antithetical to boredom; distraction gives us the illusion of not being bored. Distraction keeps us amused as we squander the distinct qualities that make us human.

2008-10-09T13:02:00.000-07:00

The vast majority of American evangelical churches have become static institutions that nurture unholiness and sloth among their congregants. They consistently promote immaturity, narcissism and entertainment. But this should be the expected fare coming from leaders that are almost entirely acculturated into a humanistic society. Can a person actually mature in their faith while attending a church that discourages growth?

Wendell Berry

2008-10-07T08:11:00.001-07:00

“When despair for the world grows in me, and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be -- I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought or grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.”

2008-09-29T14:42:00.000-07:00

Henry David Thoreau went to the woods to confront what was real and to leave superficiality behind. Today man is not even aware of the superficiality of his tragic life, nor the fact that he is about to be consumed my the monster of narcissism.

William Blake

2008-09-26T22:51:00.001-07:00

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?

And What shoulder, and what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? and what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,
And watered heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

2008-09-26T07:46:00.001-07:00

To Be Sane

"To be sane in a mad time
is bad for the brain, worse
for the heart."

Wendell Berry

William Blake

2008-09-25T16:47:00.000-07:00

“For he hears the lambs innocent call.
And he hears the ewes tender reply.
He is watchful while they are in peace.
For they know when their Shepherd is nigh.”

2008-09-23T12:37:00.000-07:00

My conscience hath a thousand several tongues,
And every tongue brings in a several tale,
And every tale condemns me for a villain.

King Richard III
Shakespear

T. S. Elliot

2008-09-08T18:38:00.000-07:00

We are the hollow men, we are stuffed men, leaning together, headpiece full of straw. Alas! Our dried voices, when we whisper together, are quite meaningless, as dry grass...

Elliot said this before he became a Christian.

O Lord, deliver me from the man of excellent intention and impure heart: for the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.

He said the above after he became a Christian.

Greene & Greene Architecture

2008-09-08T13:49:00.000-07:00

“Architecture is the art which so disposes and
adorns the edifices raised by man, that the sight of them may contribute to his mental health, power, and pleasure.” ~ Ruskin

Longfellow

2008-09-04T12:42:00.001-07:00

Be not like dumb driven cattle.

2008-08-21T10:24:00.000-07:00

Frugality is one of the most beautiful and joyful words in the English language, and yet one that we are culturally cut off from understanding and enjoying. The consumption society has made us feel that happiness lies in having things, and has failed to teach us the happiness of not having things. ~Elise Boulding

2008-08-21T10:04:00.000-07:00

Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful. ~William Morris

The Chief End of Man

2008-08-03T19:18:00.000-07:00

"The chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever."
It would be Scripturally false to leave out the second phrase - "and to enjoy Him forever."
The men who formulated this showed great wisdom and insight in saying, "and to enjoy Him forever." Nevertheless the first phrase is most important; in Christianity we have a non-determined God who did not need to create because there was love and communication within the Trinity, and yet having been created, we as men can glorify God. But we must feel the force of both sides of the issue. If we fail to emphasize that we can glorify God, we raise the whole question of whether man is significant at all. We begin to lose our humanity as soon as we begin to lose the emphasis that what we do makes a difference. We can glorify God and we can make God sad.
That is tremendous.
Francis Schaeffer

John Ruskin

2008-07-28T19:36:00.001-07:00

All books are divisible into two classes, the books of the hour, and the books of all time.

Clifford Stoll

2008-07-21T13:15:00.000-07:00

I suspect computers will deviously chew away at libraries from the inside. They'll eat up book budgets and require librarians that are more comfortable with computers than with children and scholars. Libraries will become adept at supplying the public with fast, low-quality information. The result won't be a library without books -- it'll be a library without value (Stoll 1995,214).

2008-07-18T07:57:00.001-07:00

There is a false dichotomy between the physical and the spiritual that has crept into Christianity through the writings of Plato and others. Presently it is seen as a division where going to church, reading the Bible and praying are "spiritual," but science, the job field and especially the arts are "worldly." This has lead to a felt need to "Christianize" everything to make it ok. The word "Jesus" has to be in the lyrics of a song. A painting can only be of "Christian" things. Art becomes shallow.

2008-07-18T07:52:00.001-07:00

When all is done, when all the alternatives have been explored, "not many men are in the room" -- that is, although world-views have many variations, there are not many basic world-views or basic presuppositions. -Francis Schaeffer,

2008-06-19T19:25:00.000-07:00

To me, at times , there steals a warning word;
Mine ear its whisper seems to catch.
In troubled thoughts from spectres of the night,
When falls on men the vision-seeing-trance,-
And fear has come, and trembling dread
And made my every bone to thrill with awe-
'Tis then before me stirs a breathing form;
O'er all my flesh it makes the hair rise up.
It stands; no face distinct can I discern;
An outline is before mine eyes;
Deep silence! then a voice I hear:
Is mortal man more just than God?
Is boasting man more pure than He who made him?
In his own servants, lo, he trusteth not,
Even on his angels dothe he charge defect.
Much more to them who dwell in homes of clay,
With their foundation laid in dust, and crumbled like the moth
From morn till night they're stricken down;
Without regard they perish utterly.
Their cord of life, is it not torn away?
They die-still lacking wisdom.

2008-05-14T10:29:00.000-07:00

"Conversation enriches the understanding, but solitude is the school of genius."
Sir Edward Gibbon

2008-05-14T10:28:00.001-07:00

'Tis very certain that Plato, Plotinus, Archimedes, Hermes, Newton, Milton, Wordsworth, did not live in a crowd, but descended into it from time to time as benefactors: and the wise instructor will press this point of securing to the young soul in the disposition of time and the arrangements of living, periods and habits of solitude." -- from Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Conduct of Life"

Neil Postman

2008-05-12T10:02:00.001-07:00

So idolatry has triumphed. I think Luther would join Moses in saying that the cult of the word is defenseless in the face of the image.

Camille Paglia

2008-05-12T09:59:00.001-07:00

The twentieth century is not the Age of Anxiety but the Age of Hollywood. The pagan cult of personality has reawakened and dominates all art, all thought. It is morally empty but ritually profound..... Movie screen and television screen are its sacred precincts.

The Adult Child

2008-05-09T07:28:00.000-07:00

I have been trying to determine for some time if adults are acting more childlike or are children acting more adult like; I have come to the conclusion that adults and children have met in the middle to form a new sociological group of the Adult-Child. This group contains elements of the traditional catagories of adult and child but both have compromised to reach a disturbing middle ground that has not been seen in western culture since the dark ages.

2008-05-02T09:05:00.000-07:00

A word is worth a thousand pictures.

2008-04-29T12:24:00.000-07:00

A picture is worth a thousand feelings. Shane Hipps

Thoreau

2008-04-21T20:04:00.001-07:00

All of our inventions are but improved means to an unimproved end.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

2008-04-21T20:01:00.001-07:00

Upon this gifted age, in its dark hour,
Rains from the sky a meteoric shower
Of facts... they lie unquestioned, uncombined.
Wisdom enough to leech us of our ill
Is daily spun; but there exists no loom
to weave it into fabric.

Randall Jarrell

2008-04-21T19:59:00.003-07:00

Soon we shall now everything that the 18th century did not know, and nothing it did, and it will be hard to live with us.

2008-04-14T09:17:00.000-07:00

2008-04-14T08:43:00.000-07:00

Oh this self love, this self will, it is the devil of devils, may thy Lord purge it out of all of us. Whitefield

For the philosopher the only serious question left is suicide. Albert Camus

2008-04-13T16:18:00.000-07:00

When Christ calls a man He bids him to come and die. Bonhoeffer

It is easy to make one's self universal. Leonardo DaVinci (I think he failed)

The world is screaming for answers and Christians are not even aware of the questions. Schaeffer

2008-04-11T11:16:00.000-07:00

Whenever we place a higher priority on solving our own problems than on pursuing God, we are immoral. Larry Crabb

2008-04-10T14:00:00.001-07:00

Art

2008-04-07T16:27:00.001-07:00

Art is a reflection of God's creativity, an evidence that we are made in God's image.
Francis Schaeffer

Scaredcrow

Montaigne

Thomas Jefferson

Isaiah 5:8

E.P. Roe

Wendell Berry

Virgil

Thoreau

The Civilized Savage

Diogenes of Sinope

Seneca

Dostoevsky quotes, shamelessly gathered from Anastasia's favorite quotes.

Rober Louis Stevenson

Oliver Wendell Holmes

Theodore Roosevelt

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Abraham Kyper

Aldo Leopold

Turretin

Poe

I'll Take My Stand

Leonardo da Vinci

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”

Plotinus

Henri-Frederic Amiel

Syllogism

Wendell Berry

Wendell Berry

Picture of a Factory Village 1833

John Ruskin

Eric Sloane

Booker T. Washinton

Dorothy Sayers

Thoreau

Leo Tolstoy

Eric Sloane

Randall Jarrell

Thoreau

Americans

Aldo Leopold

Is Industrialism Immoral?

Donald Davidson

Eric Sloane

Wendell Berry

William Blake

To Be Sane

William Blake

“For he hears the lambs innocent call.And he hears the ewes tender reply.He is watchful while they are in peace.For they know when their Shepherd is nigh.”

T. S. Elliot

Greene & Greene Architecture

Longfellow

The Chief End of Man

John Ruskin

Clifford Stoll

"Conversation enriches the understanding, but solitude is the school of genius." Sir Edward Gibbon

Neil Postman

Camille Paglia

The Adult Child

Thoreau

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Randall Jarrell

Art

“For he hears the lambs innocent call.
And he hears the ewes tender reply.
He is watchful while they are in peace.
For they know when their Shepherd is nigh.”

"Conversation enriches the understanding, but solitude is the school of genius."
Sir Edward Gibbon