When we fulfill any need of the human body, it gives us pleasure. To breathe gives us much pleasure.
When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long in disappointment and bitterness at the closed door that we do not expectantly look for and therefore see with pleasure and gratitude the one which has been opened for us.
The life of a family is filled with beautiful moments: rest, meals together, walks in the park or the countryside, visits to grandparents or to a sick person... But if love is missing, joy is missing, nothing is fun. Jesus gives always gives us that love: he is its endless source. In the sacrament he gives us his word and he gives us the bread of life, so that our joy may be complete.
Most of us complain about Congress. We say it's a place that doesn't reflect us; they don't listen to us. Actually, Congress well reflects the American people. It gives us exactly what we ask for.
For many of us, the computer is the means by which we earn a living. To give it a nod, then, is a way of thanking the tool for what it provides in life. It helps put bread on the table and a roof overhead. It gives us work and pleasure, exercises our minds, brings us information, connects us with other people. It is a partner helping us achieve our goals. Nodding also thanks the unseen hands and minds who helped create our machine.
When God gets us alone through suffering, heartbreak, temptation, disappointment, sickness, or by thwarted friendship - when He gets us absolutely alone, and we are totally speechless, unable to ask even one question, then He begins to teach us.
For pain is perhaps but a violent pleasure? Who could determine the point where pleasure becomes pain, where pain is still a pleasure? Is not the utmost brightness of the ideal world soothing to us, while the lightest shadows of the physical world annoy?
We sometimes feel the shadows have got hold of us, the shadows of evil. But still, it's up to us to fight.
A film like Hoop Dreams is what the movies are for. It takes us, shakes us, and makes us think in new ways about the world around us. It gives us the impression of having touched life itself.
By binding image and desire, glamour gives us pleasure, even as it heightens our yearning. It leads us to feel that the life we dream of exists, and to desire it even more.
Morality binds people into groups. It gives us tribalism, it gives us genocide, war, and politics. But it also gives us heroism, altruism, and sainthood.
Life gives us clay; it is we to make a pot out of it! But sometimes it gives us pot; it is again we to keep it in one piece, as a pot! All jobs are ours! Life only gives things and it has no other responsibility!
Faith is the framework for living. It gives us the spirit and heart that affects everything we do. If gives us hope each day. Faith gives us purpose to right wrongs, to preserve our families, and to teach our children values. Faith gives us conscience to keep us honest, even when nobody is looking. And, faith can change lives; I know first hand, because faith changed mine.
Grief and disappointment are like hate: they make men ugly with self-pity and bitterness. And how selfish they make us too.
From the midst of the very fountain of pleasure, something of bitterness arises to vex us in the flower of enjoyment.
The extreme pleasure we take in speaking of ourselves should make us apprehensive that it gives hardly any to those who listen to us.