A Quote by Samuel Johnson
Life is surely given us for higher purposes than to gather what our ancestors have wisely thrown away, and to learn what is of no value but because it has been forgotten.
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The key reason why we are richer than our ancestors is that these ancestors have bequeathed us buildings, factories and machines that have given us a high living standard to start with. Driven by irresponsible policy makers, America's present generation is consuming the nation's capital.
I've never really understood how people cannot value the future, or think that the world is going down a fast slippery slope of degradation. No, I don't think so; this is just what it's going to take to wake us up, and allow us to do what our ancestors did. You know, our ancestors brought us here by tooth and claw. A lot of people perished, a lot of pre-humans perished. Life has never been easy. Why should it be easy for us?
It's clearly possible for a something to acquire higher intelligence than its ancestors: we evolved to be smarter than our ape-like ancestors, and Einstein was smarter than his parents.
We have the ability to choose, we are God's higher form of creation, we surpass all other forms of life and we don't use the mental faculties we've been given. We don't even understand what we are capable of doing. School doesn't teach us anything about ourselves. So the more we learn about ourselves, the more we take control over our life.
What one reads, or rather all that comes to us, is surely only of interest and value in proportion as we find ourselves therein, -- form given to what was vague, what slumbered stirred to life.
Our ancestors are looking for us even if we're not looking for them. And by our ancestors I mean our bloodlines and the ancestors of the place where we live and our spiritual kin who go beyond our biological families. We could be walking around carrying an entire ancestral history of the wrong kind for us.
If a friend is the one who summons us to our best, then is not Jesus Christ our best friend, and should we not think of the Communion as one of His chief appeals to us to be our best? The Lord's Supper looks not back to our past with a critical eye, but to our future, with a hopeful one. The Master appeals from what we have been to what we may be. He bids us come, not because we are better than we have been, but because He wants us to be. To stay away because our hearts are cold is to refuse to go to the fire till we are warm.
To exist in this vast universe for a speck of time is the great gift of life. Our tiny sliver of time is our gift of life. It is our only life. The universe will go on, indifferent to our brief existence, but while we are here we touch not just part of that vastness, but also the lives around us. Life is the gift each of us has been given. Each life is our own and no one else's. It is precious beyond all counting. It is the greatest value we can have. Cherish it for what it truly is..... Your life is yours alone. Rise up and live it.
Given the scale of life in the cosmos, one human life is no more than a tiny blip. Each one of us is a just visitor to this planet, a guest, who will only stay for a limited time. What greater folly could there be than to spend this short time alone, unhappy or in conflict with our companions? Far better, surely, to use our short time here in living a meaningful life, enriched by our sense of connection with others and being of service to them.
I think the irony of modern life is that our data, our highly personal information, has been taken from us, but in many cases it was given away freely by us. We willfully, consciously or unconsciously, acquiesced and gave it away for a new app, you know? For the products that we have. We didn't read the fine print, or don't even really care and didn't really check to see if we could opt out. No one had to steal it from us.
When our hearts turn to our ancestors, something changes inside us. We feel part of something greater than ourselves. Our inborn yearnings for family connections are fulfilled when we are linked to our ancestors.
Surely there must be a better gift God could have given us than life?
I often wish for the end of the wretched remnant of my life; and that wish is a rational one; but then the innate principle of self-preservation, wisely implanted in our natures, for obvious purposes, opposes that wish, and makes us endeavour to spin out our thread as long as we can, however decayed and rotten it may be.
The value of "one person, one vote," the value of equality, is a value that was given to us more than 50 years ago as a central part of our constitutional tradition. So, under that principle, we ought to be applying the same standard today that I would have said we should have applied a year ago.
When we depend on anything smaller than God to provide us with the security, significance, meaning, and value that we long for, God will love us enough to take it away. Much of our anger and bitterness, therefore, is God prying open our hands and taking away something we've held onto more tightly than him.
Actually, all gifts have been given for reasons of temporal use and need and they will surely pass away at the end of the present dispensation. Love, however, will never be cut off. It works in us and for us, and not simply in this life. For when the burden of physical need has been laid aside in the time to come it will endure, more effectively, more excellently, forever unfailing, clinging to God with more fire and zeal through all the length of incorruption.
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