A Quote by Dietrich Bonhoeffer
It seems to me more important actually to share someones distress than to use smooth words about it.
Related Quotes
For a pragmatist like me, the important issues concern the words we might deploy to achieve our purposes, rather than the language we actually use.
I have a really good idea of who my readers are and always write with a sensitivity to my audience. I use the F word when necessary, but there are words I won't use, mainly because I don't like them. I don't write about body parts when I write about sex. It's not about the physiological, it's more important for teens to read about the emotional aspects. I do think there are times when self-censorship is important.
You're able to use a search engine, like Google or Bing or whatever. But those engines don't understand anything about pages that they give you; they essentially index the pages based on the words that you're searching, and then they intersect that with the words in your query, and they use some tricks to figure out which pages are more important than others. But they don't understand anything.
I have this theory that the more important and intimate the emotion, the fewer words are required to express it. For instance in dating: 'Will you go out with me?' Six words. 'I really care for you.' Five words. 'You matter to me' Four words. 'I love you.' Three words. 'Marry me.' Two words. Well, what's left? What's the one most important and intimate word you can ever say to somebody?
'Goodbye...'
What is the good of words if they aren't important enough to quarrel over? Why do we choose one word more than another if there isn't any difference between them? If you called a woman a chimpanzee instead of an angel, wouldn't there be a quarrel about a word? If you're not going to argue about words, what are you going to argue about? Are you going to convey your meaning to me by moving your ears? The Church and the heresies always used to fight about words, because they are the only thing worth fighting about.
Writing is incidental to my primary objective, which is spinning a good yarn. I view myself as a storyteller more than a writer. The story - and hence the extensive research that goes into each one of my books - is much more important than the words that I use to narrate it.
The longer I live the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company . . . a church . . . a home.
I find that by putting things in writing I can understand them and see them a little more objectively. ... For words are merely tools and if you use the right ones you can actually put even your life in order, if you don't lie to yourself and use the wrong words.
Because I think of novels as collaborative enterprises between the writer and the reader, all of my novels so far have ending with endings that maybe point in more than one direction, and that seems important to me because it seems important to me that after you've invested twenty or thirty hours of your imaginative life into this narrative that you have some stake in how it ends.
One of the things that slightly annoys me in business is that we use words like innovation. Young people often think innovation is about doing something new, but actually it's not. It's about doing something better than your competition.
We need to be smarter than our smart phones and realize the people we are with are more important than the people we aren't with, and way more important than the strangers we hope will tweet and like and share and Instagram whatever we're sending out into the cybersphere.
Of the small gifts of heaven, / It seems to me a more than equal share / At birth was given / To girls with curly hair.
Actually I'm more culturally Muslim than religiously but being Muslim is an important part of my identity. As Muslim, I feel it's important to counter any form of bigotry, be it anti-Semitism, homophobia, racism, etc. These forms of hate share a common denominator of misinformation and intentional fear mongering.
I feel like what you tell yourself after the words 'I am...' is so important. I'm very careful with the words I use about myself.
I would say 'competence' actually might be slightly more important than passion. I understand that it is important to feel strongly about things, but give me a competent dentist over a passionate dentist any day, if only because something about the phrase 'passionate dentist' is deeply unnerving.
It seems to me, Monsieur, that there is nothing more galling in great physical misfortunes than to be compelled to make all those about us share in our sufferings. The ills of the soul one can hide, but those which attack the body and destroy the faculties cannot be concealed.
Related Authors
Albert Schweitzer Quotes
German
Theologian
Ernest Holmes Quotes
American
Theologian
Francis Schaeffer Quotes
American
Theologian
Huston Smith Quotes
American
Theologian
Johann Kaspar Lavater Quotes
German
Theologian
John Calvin Quotes
French
Theologian
John Owen Quotes
English
Theologian
Karl Barth Quotes
Swiss
Theologian
Kevin DeYoung Quotes
American
Theologian
Mary Baker Eddy Quotes
American
Theologian
Oswald Chambers Quotes
Scottish
Theologian
Paul Tillich Quotes
German
Theologian
Reinhold Niebuhr Quotes
American
Theologian
Samuel Rutherford Quotes
Scottish
Theologian
Stanley Hauerwas Quotes
American
Theologian
Thomas Aquinas Quotes
Italian
Theologian