on thinking Quotes

“All right, all right, you go right on thinking you an act of God created in his image, and I’ll go right on thinking I’m descended from an ape. When you look in the mirror I should think you’d feel pretty discouraged; I wouldn’t be happy to look at myself and think that my faces is an Imago Dei. It wouldn’t make me feel I’d done very well by God. But when I look in the mirror and that I’m descended from an ape, I feel I’ve done remarkably well.”

“To make it quite practical I have a very simple test. After I have explained the way of Christ to somebody I say “Now, are you ready to say that you are a Christian?” And they hesitate. And then I say, “What’s the matter? Why are you hesitating?” And so often people say, “I don’t feel like I’m good enough yet. I don’t think I’m ready to say I’m a Christian now.” And at once I know that I have been wasting my breath. They are still thinking in terms of themselves. They have to do it. It sounds very modest to say, “Well, I don’t think I’ good enough,” but it’s a very denial of the faith. The very essence of the Christian faith is to say that He is good enough and I am in Him. As long as you go on thinking about yourself like that and saying, “I’m not good enough; Oh, I’m not good enough,” you are denying God – you are denying the gospel – you are denying the very essence of the faith and you will never be happy. You think you’re better at times and then again you will find you are not as good at other times than you thought you were. You will be up and down forever. How can I put it plainly? It doesn’t matter if you have almost entered into the depths of hell. It does not matter if you are guilty of murder as well as every other vile sin. It does not matter from the standpoint of being justified before God at all. You are no more hopeless than the most moral and respectable person in the world.”

“The thought of holy comes before holy is built. Focusing on thinking healthy, positive thoughts is a precursor to the Universe channeling divine energy through us. We see, feel, touch, and smell holy once we think it. As we think, so we become.”

“It’s like those nights when I was a kid, lying awake thinking the darkness would go on forever. And I couldn’t go back to sleep because of the dream of the whatever it was in the cellar coming out of the corner. I’d lie in the hot, rumpled bed, hot burning hot, trying to shut myself away and know that there were three eternities before the dawn. Everything was the night world, the other world where everything but good could happen, the world of ghosts and robbers and horrors, of things harmless in the daytime coming to life, the wardrobe, the picture in the book, the story, coffins, corpses, vampires, and always squeezing, tormenting darkness, smoke thick. And I’d think of anything because if I didn’t go on thinking I’d remember whatever it was in the cellar down there, and my mind would go walking away from my body and go down three stories defenceless, down the dark stair past the tall, haunted clock, through the whining door, down the terrible steps to where the coffin ends were crushed in the walls of the cellar – and I’d be held helpless on the stone floor, trying to run back, run away, climb up----”

“Go on thinking that you don't need to be read and you'll find that it may become quite true: no one will feel the need tom read it because it is written for yourself alone and the public won't feel any impulse to gate crash such a private party. ”

“And so we keep on thinking, because the next thought might be the answer.”

“Part of every misery is, so to speak, the misery's shadow or reflection: the fact that you don't merely suffer but have to keep on thinking about the fact that you suffer. I not only live each endless day in grief, but live each day thinking about living each day in grief.”

“Focus on making yourself better, not on thinking that you are better.”

“If you don’t want to waste your time on thinking, start reading.”