Top 468 Quotes & Sayings by Criss Jami - Page 8

Happiness is good, but well-overrated: what we hate most are the very motivators that put us in gear. A man drifts along with little to contribute until something agitates him enough to make a difference, whether for himself or for his communities.

The surface of learning is hearing what your ears aren't prepared to hear, and the core of learning is hearing what your ears don't want to hear.

To reach only for that which pleasantly enchants you is the least of imagination, if even imagination at all, by the obvious reality of remaining within your means. The greater of imagination is parallel to risk. It extends beyond your comfort zone or haven, or sense of beauty, or what you personally believe suits you in exploration of what may not.

Some concepts are so incredibly risky they take an honest fool to try to articulate them.

Many of us fight for and boast our freedom of what is ultimately the ability to prove ourselves to other people. It is unfortunate that only a few of us are so free in our joy, we no longer feel the need to prove ourselves to anyone.

What further helps to reveal reality is when our personal thinking ceases to take reality for granted.

Gloating is a superficial glowing, floating is an idle flowing, and bloatedness is the paralysis of blowing up; because silent movement results in loud victories.

Simply minding one's own business is more offensive than being intrusive. Without ever saying a word one can make a person feel less-than.

I still believe that many Americans have a deep longing for that glorious moment when a sermon is more Biblical than American.

Love is without a doubt the laziest theory for the meaning of life, but when it actually comes a time to do it we find just enough energy to over-complicate life again. Any devil can love, whom he himself sees as, a good person who has treated him well, but to love also the polar opposite is what separates love from fickle emotions.

If one should criticize one should always have a meaningful explanation to accompany.

In the end, only God can see the heart of an individual and distinguish the difference between legalistic deadweight and the passion of holy solemnity.

Most men either compromise or drop their greatest talents and start running after, what they perceive to be, a more reasonable success, and somewhere in between they end up with a discontented settlement. Safety is indeed stability, but it is not progression.

The real test of love is loving those who we feel are the hardest ones to love.

God gives His deepest discernment and sharpest marksmanship to men who aim to expose His truth before an enemy's lies.

There is a difference between criticizing people and criticizing a people's uninformed ideals. That is, unless one defines himself or others by their ideals, then he is offended, and usually offended secretly. Because oddly enough, this person is the same person quickest to resort to dismissive name-calling, such as 'bigot' or 'zealot'. And oddly enough, he is always the one, the 'open-minded' one, who adamantly protests for, not only himself, but others not to listen to any type of scholarly theological truth inherently for the sake of his own personal, moral beliefs.

History does seem to repeat itself hence it's mindboggling to still hear the 'avoid all negative people' speeches from, of all people, supposedly important spiritual teachers. Ironically, their congregations would probably be the ones hiding their faces from the accuracies of truth speakers like Christ. Now, Christ was the complete opposite of negative, however the danger is that truth is often misunderstood as negativity by those who are constantly taught to only seek flattery.

Telling an introvert to go to a party is like telling a saint to go to Hell.

I think that there are excellent and poor thinking habits just as there are healthy and unhealthy eating habits; and when a man really knows how to think, you cannot necessarily assert that he thinks too much in a strictly negative connotation. Perhaps this is in a sense food for thought, whereas the other is fool for thought.

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

A man who goes into a restaurant and blatantly disrespects the servers shows a strong discontent with his own being. Deep down he knows that restaurant service is the closest thing he will ever experience to being served like a king.

The skeptic says that the believer has lost his own mind under God. On the contrary, it is the people who follow God who are most like his children, who willingly and consciously walk in his will; but those who oppose him oppose him vainly and at their own expense, and, figuratively, seem to be more like his tools. They don't diminish his glory, but instead he still manages to use them in ways of unconsciously carrying out his will.

When you're truly awesome, you know that it's actually a burden and wish day after day to be relieved of such a curse. Think of about 95% of the superheroes.

It is ignorance that is at times incomprehensible to the wise; for instance, he may not see 'the positive person' or 'the negative person' in a black and white way as many people do. A wise man may not understand it because, as a catalyst of wisdom, but not wise in his own eyes, even he can learn from and give back to fools. To think that an individual has absolutely nothing to offer to the table is counter-intuitively what the wise man considers to be 'the ignorance of hopelessness'.

It's simple, it's not that simple; or life is simple, but the things in it are not. When a man does not understand it, he tends to inflate it. When he does, he tends to deflate it. In the end, neither images are fully accurate.

Tell me that the purpose of life is to have fun, and without a care in the world I'll begin wreaking havoc on everything I pass. Now that's what I call pure, honest fun.

When we find that God's ways always coincide with our own ways, it's time to question who we're really worshipping, God or ourselves. The latter moves the nature of godliness from the King to our servant to a slave, a deduction into the realm of selfhood and then the lower, slavehood. It's a spiritual mathematics in that men who need God in his godhood are humble yet strong and spiritually ambitious while men who need a slave in their selfhood are ultimately paralyzed and will remain paralyzed.

In societies where coolness and being cool is a top priority, the religious replace the word 'religious' with 'spiritual' to make their faiths seem less extreme.

As Aristotle said, 'Excellence is a habit.' I would say furthermore that excellence is made constant through the feeling that comes right after one has completed a work which he himself finds undeniably awe-inspiring. He only wants to relax until he's ready to renew such a feeling all over again because to him, all else has become absolutely trivial.

You get hit the hardest when trying to run or hide from a problem. Like the defense on a football field, putting all focus on evading only one defender is asking to be blindsided.

If truth is like the terrain, are we the generation who sees it as one who has worn shoes all his life or one who has never worn shoes? Yet still, even if the walk starts out as painful, the experience may be well worth it.

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

When you mature in your relationship with God you realize how suffering and patience are like eating your spiritual vegetables.

The conscious attempt to be a good person without Christ is as legalistic as an attempt to make it into Heaven through empty religiosity.

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

I enjoy melancholic music and art. They take me to places I don't normally get to go.

Senses of humor define people, as factions, deeper rooted than religious or political opinions. When carrying out everyday tasks, opinions are rather easy to set aside, but those whom a person shares a sense of humor with are his closest friends. They are always there to make the biggest influence.

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

I am a fan of overdoing something, but not running it into the ground. They are complete opposites with only a fine line separating them.

Let's not grow with our roots in the ground.

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

Usually without realizing it, our ultimate peace starts and ends in the authority of God alone, which means the solution to living in joy, peace, and harmony with our fellow men has been here for all since the beginning of mankind and throughout civilization. I have yet to feel the urge to argue politics: it reminds me of getting off the freeway to sit in raging traffic.

When you're socially awkward, you're isolated more than usual, and when you're isolated more than usual, your creativity is less compromised by what has already been said and done. All your hope in life starts to depend on your craft, so you try to perfect it. One reason I stay isolated more than the average person is to keep my creativity as fierce as possible. Being the odd one out may have its temporary disadvantages, but more importantly, it has its permanent advantages.

From recovery to rags and rags to recovery symbolizes art - a perfect compilation of human imperfections.

There's more to logic than identifying logical fallacies.

If ever it's necessary to ride the bandwagon, it's done with one leg swinging out and eyes scoping the fields.

Love may be harder to find in some people, but when they do love you know it must be something marvelous.

The motive behind criticism often determines its validity. Those who care criticize where necessary. Those who envy criticize the moment they think that they have found a weak spot.