Let us dare to read, think, speak and write.
~ John Adams, 2nd President of the United States
As addictions go, reading is among the cleanest, easiest to feed, happiest.
~ Joseph Addison
Some books are undeservedly forgotten, none are undeservedly remembered.
~ W. H. Auden
Reading maketh a full man.
~ Francis Bacon
Some books are to be tasted, other to be swallowed, and a few to be chewed and digested.
~ Francis Bacon
He who loveth a book will never want a faithful friend, a wholesome counselor, a cheerful companion, or an effectual comforter.
~ Isaac Barrow
When I am dead, I hope it may be said: “His sins were scarlet, but his books were read.”
~ Hilaire Belloc
I speak as an unregenerate reader, one who still believes that language and not technology is the true evolutionary miracle. I have not yet given up on the idea that the experience of literature offers a kind of wisdom that cannot be discovered elsewhere; that there is profundity in the verbal encounter itself, never mind what further profundities that author has to offer; and that for a host of reasons the bound book is the ideal vehicle for the written word.
~ Sven Birkerts, in The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age
The information I most want is in books not yet written by people not yet born.
~ Ashleigh Brilliant
There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.
~ Joseph Brodsky
Reader, If it be not strong upon thy heart to practise what thou readest, to what end dost thou read? To increase thy own condemnation? If thy light and knowledge be not turned into practice, the more knowing man thou art, the more miserable man thou wilt be in the day of recompense; thy light and knowledge will more torment thee than all the devils in hell. Thy knowledge will be that rod that will eternally lash thee, and that scorpion that will for ever bite thee, and that worm that will everlastingly gnaw thee; therefore read, and labour to know, that thou mayest do, or else thou art undone for ever. When Demosthenes was asked, what was the first part of an orator, what the second, what the third? he answered, Action; the same may I say. If any should ask me, what is the first, the second, the third part of a Christian? I must answer, Action; as that man that reads that he may know, and that labours to know that he may do, will have two heavens — a heaven of joy, peace and comfort on earth, and a heaven of glory and happiness after death.
~ Thomas Brooks, in Precious Remedies against Satan’s Devices, Thomas Brooks, Banner of Truth, 1652 p. 22
Books we must have though we lack bread.
~ Alice Brotherton
A good book is never exhausted. It oges on whispering to you from the wall.
~ Anatole Broyard
Laws die; books never.
~ Edward Bulwer-Lytton
The possession of a book becomes a substitute for reading it.
~ Anthony Burgess
To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting.
~ Edmund Burke
All the glory of the world would be buried in oblivion, unless God had provided mortals with the remedy of books.
~ Richard De Bury, in Philobiblion
The oldest books are still only just out to those who have not read them.
~ Samuel Butler
A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.
~ Italo Calvino
Reading for experience is the only reading that justifies excitement. Reading for facts is necessary bu the less said about it in public the better. Reading for distraction is like taking medicine. We do it, but it is nothing to be proud of. But reading for experience is transforming.
~ Henry Seidel Canby
All that mankind has done, thought, gained, or been: it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of books.
~ Thomas Carlyle
In books lies the soul of the whole past time; the articulate, audible voice of the past, when the body and material substance of it has altogether vanished like a dream.
~ Thomas Carlyle
He gave himself up so wholly to the reading of romances that a-nights he would pore on until it was day, and a-days he would read on until it was night; and thus he sleeping little and reading much the moisture of his brain was exhausted to that degree that at last he lost the use of his reason.
~ Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, in Don Quixote
God be thanked for books. They are the voices of the distant and the dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life of past ages.
~ William E. Channing
A book is like a garden carried in the pocket.
~ Chinese proverb
The strongest memory is weaker than the palest ink.
~ Chines proverb
“What shall I do with my books?” was the question; and the answer “Read them” sobered the questioner.
But if you cannot read them, at any rate handle them and, as it were, fondle them. Peer into them. Let them fall open where they will. Read on from the very first sentence that arrests the eye. Then turn to another. Make a voyage of discovery, taking soundings of uncharted seas. . . . Arrange them on your own plan, so that if you do not know what is in them, you at least know where they are. If they cannot be your friends, let them at any rate be your acquanintances. If they cannot enter the circle of your life, do not deny them at least a nod of recognition.
~ Winston Churchill
Anyone who has a book collection and a garden wants for nothing.
~ Cicero
A room without books is like a body without a soul.
~ Cicero
The only way to do all the things you’d like to do is to read.
~ Tom Clancy
A book in the hand is worth two on the shelf.
~ Henry T. Coutts
One must be drenched in words, literally soaked in them, to have the right ones form themselves into the proper patterns at the right moment.
~ Hart Crane
Literature is man’s exploration of man by artificial light, which is better than natural light because we can direct it where we want.
~ David Daiches
The reading of all good books is like conversation with the finest men of past centuries.
~ Rene Descartes
There are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best parts.
~ Charles Dickens
There is no Frigate like a Book
To take us Lands away
Nor any Coursers like a Page
of Prancing Poetry.
This Traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of Toll–
How frugal is the Chariot
That bears the Human Soul.
~ Emily Dickinson
The world is a library of strange and wonderful books, and sometimes we just need to go prowling through the stacks.
~ Michael Dirda
I seldom read on beaches or in gardens. You can’t read by two lights at once, the light of day and the light of the book. You should read by electric light, the room in shadow, and only the page lit up.
~ Marguerite Duras
Books are the quietest and most constant of friends. they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, the most patient teachers.
~ Charles Eliot
A collector recently bought at public auction, in London, for one hundred and fifty-seven guineas, an autograph of Shakespeare; but for nothing a school-boy can read Hamlet and can detect secrets of highest concernment yet unpublished therein.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson in “Experience”
There is then creative reading as well as creative writing. When the mind is braced by labor and invention, the page of whatever book we read becomes luminous with manifold allusion. Every sentence is doubly significant, and the sense of our author is as broad as the world.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, in The American Scholar
When I get a little money, I buy books; and if any is left, I buy food and clothes. My luggage is my library. My home is where my books are.
~ Desiderius Erasmus
There are those who, while reading a book, recall, compare, conjure up emotions from other, previous readings. This is one of the most delicate forms of adultery.
~ Ezequiel Martínez Estrada
When you reread a classic, you do not see more in the book than you did before; you see more in you than was there before.
~ Clifton Fadiman
If the crowns of all the kingdoms of the Empire were laid at my feet in exchange for my books and my love of reading, I would spurn them all.
~ Francois Fenelon
But he who truly loves books loves all books alike, and not only this, but it grieves him that all other men do not share with him this noble passion. Verily, this is the most unselfish of loves!
~ Eugene Field in Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac
The one way of tolerating existence is to lose oneself in literature as in a perpetual orgy.
~ Gustave Flaubert
And indeed, what is better than to sit by one’s fireside in the evening with a book, while the wind beats against the window and the lamp is buring?
~ Gustave Flaubert in Madame Bovary
Read in order to Live.
~ Gustave Flaubert
Never lend books, for no one ever returns them; the only books I have in my library are books that other folk have lent me.
~ Anatole France
There are no bad books any more than there are ugly women.
~ Anatole France
The book must of necessity be put into a bookcase. And the bookcase must be housed. And the house must be kept. And the library must be dusted, must be arranged, must be catalogued. What a vista of toil, yet not unhappy toil!
~ William Gladstone
I have always suspected that authors lie about the books they read, their purported influences, much as men lie about their sex lives; they are at once ashamed and vain, reluctant to be judged, hiding behind a safe parapet like Joyce and Proust and Kafka.
~ Brian Glanville
The dear good people don’t know how long it takes to learn to read. I’ve been at it eighty years, and can’t say yet that I’ve reached the goal.
~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The unread story is not a story; it is little black marks on wood pulp. The reader, reading it, makes it live: a live thing, a story.
~ Ursula Le Guin
The greatest gift is the passion for reading. It is cheap, it consoles, it distracts, it excites, it ives you moral knowledge of the world and experience of a wide kind. It is moral illumination.
~ Elizabeth Hardwick
What is a book? Part matter and part spirit; par thing and part thought–however you look at it, if defies definition.
~ Ernest O. Hauser
All good books have one thing in common. They are truer than if they had really happened.
~ Ernest Hemingway
These are not books, lumps of lifeless paper, but minds alive on the shelves. From each of them goes out its own voice . . . and just as the touch of a button on our set will fill the room with music, so by taking down one of these volumes and opening it, one can call into range the voice of a man far distant in time and space, and hear him speaking to us, mind to mind, heart to heart.
~ Gilbert Highet
It is not true that we have only one life to live; if we can read, we can live as many more lives and as many kinds of lives as we wish.
~ S.I. Hiyakawa
Poets are never allowed to be mediocre by the gods, by men or by publishers.
~ Horace as quoted by Montaigne
Reading is a sage way to bump up against life. Reading may be an escape, but it is not escape from my own life and problems. It is escape from the narrow boundaries of being only me.
~ Gladys Hunt, in Honey for a Woman’s Heart (HT: Heidi)
Every man who knows how to read has it in him power to magnify himself, to multiply the ways in which he exists, to make his life full, significant, and interesting.
~ Aldous Huxley
Farther than arrows, higher than wings fly poet’s song and prophet’s words.
~ Inscription on the Brooklyn Public Library
Books are the most enduring monument of man’s achievement. Through them, civilization becomes cumulative.
~ Inscription in the Detroit Public Library
A good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, imbalm’d and treasur’d up on purpose to a life beyond life.
~ Inscription in the New York Public Library.
Here genius lies enshrined.
Here sleep in silent majesty
The monarchs of the mind
~ Inscription in the St. Louis Public Library
People who don’t read are brutes.
~ Eugene Ionesco
Books constitute capital. A library book lasts as long as a house, for hundreds of years. It is not, then, an article of mere consumption but fairly of capital, and often in the case of professional men, setting out in life, it is their only capital.
~ Thomas Jefferson
I cannot live without books.
~ Thomas Jefferson
The worst thing about new books is that they keep us from reading the old ones.
~ Joseph Joubert
A reader finds little in a book save what he puts here. But in a great book he finds space to put many things.
~ Joseph Joubert
A book ought to be an icepick to break up the frozen sea within us.
~ Franz Kafka
A book is a gift you can open again and again.
~ Garrison Keillor
As a former English major, I am a sitting duck for Gift Books, and in the past few years I’ve gotten Dickens, Thackeray, Smollet, Richardson, Emerson, Keats, Boswell and the Brontes, all of them Great, none of them ever read by me, all of them now on a shelf, looking at me and making me feel guilty.
~Garrison Keillor
Literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disenfranchised. No barrier of the senses shuts me out from the sweet, gracious discourse of my book friends. They talk to me without embarrassment or awkwardness.
~ Helen Keller
If this nation is to be wise as well as strong, if we are to achieve our destiny, then we need more new ideas for more wise men reading more good books in more public libraries.
~ John F. Kennedy
The aim of great books is ethical: to teach what it means to be a man. Every major form of literary art has taken for its deeper themes what T.S. Eliot called “the permanent things”–the norms of human action.
~ Russell Kirk, in Enemies of the Permanent Things. LaSalle, IL: Sherwood Sugden and Co., 1984. page 41
A book reads the better which is our own, and has been so long known to us, that we know the topography of its blots, and dog’s ears, and can trace the dirt in it to having read it at tea with buttered muffins.
~ Charles Lamb
In some respects the better a book is, the less it demands from the binding.
~ Charles Lamb
Magazines all too frequently lead to books, and should be regarded by the prudent as the heavy petting of literature.
~ Fran Lebowitz
Any kid who has parents who are interested in him and has a houseful of books isn’t poor.
~ Sam Levenson
You can’t get a cup of tea big enough or a book long enough to suit me.
~ C. S. Lewis
A book is a mirror: If an ass peers into it, you can’t expect an apostle to look out.
~ G. C. Lichtenberg
Books, nowadays, are printed by people who do not understand them, sold by people who do not understand them, read and reviewed by people who do not understand them, and even written by people who do not understand them.
~ G. C. Lichtenberg
The things I want to know are in books; my best friend is the man who’ll get me a book I ain’t read.
~ Abraham Lincoln
Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking makes what we read ours. We are of the ruminating kind, and it is not enough to cram ourselves with a great load of collections; unless we chew them over again, they will not give us strength and nourishment.
~ John Locke
The love of learning, the sequestered nooks
All the sweet serenity of books.
~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Books are more than books. They are the life, the very heart and core of ages past, the reason why men lived and worked and died, the essence and quintessence of their lives.
~ Amy Lowell
The world exists to be put in a book.
~ Stephane Mallarme
I am a machine condemned to devour books.
~ Karl Marx, in a letter to Engels, April 11, 1868
Readers, on the other hand, have at least 7.5 books going all the time. Actually, the number of books a reader takes on is usually directly related to the number of bathrooms he has in his home and office. I am working on a survey that will show that, over a lifetime, readers are in bathrooms seven years and three months longer than nonreaders.
~ Calvin Miller, “Confessions of a Librophliac” in Christianity Today, January 18, 1985, page 32.
A good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.
~ John Milton
As good almost kill a man as kill a good book: who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God’s image; but he who destroys a good book kills reason itself.
~ John Milton
What enriches language is its being handled and exploited by beautiful minds–not so much by making innovations as by expanding it through more vigorous and varied applications, by extending it and deploying it. It is not words that they contribute: what they do is enrich their words, deepen their meanings and tie down their usage; they teach it unaccustomed rhythms, prudently though and with ingenuity.
~ Michel de Montaigne, “On Some Lines of Virgil”
There is hardly any grief that an hour’s reading will not dissipate.
~ Montesquieu
A book is the only place in which you can examine a fragile thought without breaking it, or explore an explosive idea without fear that it will go off in you face. . . . It is one of the few havens remaining where a man’s mind can get both provocation and privacy.
~ Edward P. Morgan
Malnutrition of the reading faculty is a serious thing.
~ Christopher Morley, in The Haunted Bookshop
Just the knowledge that a good book is awaiting one at the end of a long day makes that day happier.
~ Kathleen Norris
Read properly, fewer books than a hundred would suffice for a liberal education. Read superficially, the British Museum Library might still leave the student a barbarian.
~ A. R. Orage)
Always read something that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.
~ P.J. O’Rourke
Until one has some kind of professional relationship with books, one does not discover how bad the majority of them are.
~ George Orwell
A great novel is a kind of conversion experience. We come away from it changed.
~ Katherine Patterson
I divide all readers into two classes: Those who read to remember and those who read to forget.
~ William Lyon Phelps
In books I have traveled, not only to other worlds, but into my own.
~ Anna Quindlen, in How Reading Changed My Life
Books are the plane, and the train, and the road. they are the destination, and the journey. They are home.
~ Anna Quindlen, in How Reading Changed My Life
Tough choices face the biblioholic at every step of the way–like choosing between reading and eating, between buying new clothes and buying books, between a reasonable lifestyle and one of penurious but masochistic happiness lived out in the wallow of excess.
~ Tom Raabe, Biblioholism: The Literary Addiction
Reading makes immigrants of us all. It takes us away from home, but more important, it finds homes for us everywhere.
~ Hazel Rochman
People die, but books never die. No man and no force can abolish memory.
~ Franklin Roosevelt
The smallest bookstore still contains more ideas of worth than have been presented in the entire history of television.
~ Andrew Ross
The universe is made of stories,
not of atoms.
~ Muriel Rukeyser, “The Speed of Darkness”
If a book is worth reading, it is worth buying.
~ John Ruskin, in Sesame and Lilies
You must get into the habit of looking intensely at words, and assuring yourself of their meaning, syllable by syllable–nay, letter by letter… you might read all the books in the British Museum (if you could live long enough) and remain an utterly “illiterate,” undeducated person; but if you read ten pages of a good book, letter by letter, — that is to say, with real accuracy– you are for evermore in some measure an educated person.
~ John Ruskin
The Bible is the one book to which any thoughtful man may go with any honest question of life or destiny and find the answer of God by honest searching.
~ John Ruskin
There are two motives for reading a book: one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it.
~ Bertrand Russell
All my life I have been trying to learn to read, to see and hear, and to write.
~ Carl Sandburg
The peace of great books be for you,
Stains of pressed clover leaves on pages,
Bleach of the light of years held in leather.
~ Carl Sandburg, from his poem “For You”, in Harvest Poems: 1910-1960
The difference between the effect produced on the mind by thinking for yourself and that produced by reading is incredibly great…For reading forcibly imposes on the mind thoughts that are as foreign to its mood as the signet is to the wax upon which it impresses its seal. The mind is totally subjected to an external compulsion to think this or that for which it has no inclination and is not in the mood…The result is that much reading robs the mind of all elasticity, as the continual pressure of a weight does a spring, and that the surest way of never having any thoughts of your own is to pick up a book every time you have a free moment.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer, Essays and Aphorisms
Desultory reading is delightful, but to be beneficial, our reading must be carefully directed.
~ Seneca
It does not matter how many, but how good, books you have.
~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Learning to read . . . we slowly learn to read ourselves. Once we learn how to read, even if then we do not live more wisely, we can at least begin to be aware of why we have not.
~ Mark Shorer
No furniture is so charming as books.
~ Sydney Smith
Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.
~ Richard Steele
And if a man reads very hard, as the old anecdote reminds us, he will have little time for thought.
~ Robert Lewis Stevenson, in An Apology For Idlers
As if a man’s soul were not too small to begin with, they have dwarfed an narrowed theirs by a life of all work and no play; until here they are at forty, with a listless attention, a mind vacant of all material of amusement, and not one thought to rub against another, while they wait for the train.
~ Robert Lewis Stevenson, in An Apology For Idlers
Books are good enough in their own way, but they are a mighty bloodless substitute for life.
~ Robert Lewis Stevenson, in An Apology For Idlers
A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted. You should live several lives while reading it.
~ William Styron
My home is where my books are.
~ Ellen Thompson
Books are the treasured wealth of the world, to fit the inheritance of generations.
~ Henry David Thoreau
Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.
~ Henry David Thoreau
Books must be read as deliberately and as reservedly as they were written.
~ Henry David Thoreau
How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book!
~ Henry David Thoreau, in Reading
I always begin at the left with the opening word of the sentence and read towards the right and I recommend this method.
~ James Thurber
Book love, my friends, is your pass to the greatest, the purest, and the most perfect pleasure that God has prepared for His creatures.
~ Anthony Trollope
Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. Without books, the development of civilization would have been impossible. They are engines of change, windows on the world, “lighthouses” (as a poet said) “erected in the sea of time.” They are companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of the mind. Books are humanity in print.
~ Barbara Tuchman.
If you’re going to be a prisoner of your own mind, the least you can do is make sure it’s well furnished.
~ Peter Ustinov
You tell me your favorite novelists and I’ll tell you whom you vote for, or whether you vote at all.
~ Stephen Vizinczey
The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from out neighbors, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all.
~ Voltaire
Books rule the world, or at least those nations which have a written language; the others do not matter.
~ Voltaire
A novelist has mad a fictional representation of life. I doing so, he has revealed to us more significance, it may be, than he could find in life itself.
~ Bernard de Voto
I only read what I am hungry for at the moment when I have an appetite for it, and then I do not read, I eat.
~ Simone Weil
Books are lighthouses erected in the great sea of time.
~ E.P. Whipple
As in the sexual experience, there are never more than two persons present in the act of reading–the writer, who is the impregnator, and the reader, who is the resspondent. This gives the experience of reading a sublimity and power unequalled by any other form of communication.
~ E. B. White
Comerado, this is no book,
Who touches this, touches a man,
(Is it night? Are we here alone?)
It is I you hold, and who holds you,
I spring from the pages into your arms–decease calls me forth.
~ Walt Whitman, “Leaves of Grass”
Words! Mere words! How terrible they were! How clear, and vivid and cruel! One could not escape from them. And yet what a subtle magic there was in them! They seemed to be able to give a plastic form to formless things, and to have a music of their own as sweet as that of the viol or lute. Mere words! Was there anything so real as words?
~ Oscar Wilde in The Picture of Dorian Gray
A ravening appetite in him demanded that he read everything that had ever been written about human experience. He read no more from pleasure–the thought that other books were waiting for him tore at his heart forever. He pictured himself as tearing the entrails from a book as from a fowl.
~ Thomas Wolfe, in Of Time and the River
We agreed that people are now afraid of the English language. He [T.S. Eliot] said it came of being bookish, but not reading books enough. One should read all styles thoroughly.
~ Virginia Woolf from The Diary of Virginia Woolf, Volume Two: 1920-1924
Second-hand books are wild books, homeless books; they have come together in vast flocks of variegated feather, and have a charm which the domesticated volumes of the library lack. Besides, in this random miscellaneous company we may rub against some complete stranger who will, with luck, turn into the best friend we have in the world.
~ Virginia Woolf in her essay “Street Haunting”
Of course, literature is the only spiritual and humane career. Even painting tends to dumness, and music turns people erotic, whereas the more you write the nicer you become.
~ Virginia Woolf
Our true birthplace is that in which we cast for the first time an intelligent eye on ourselves. My first homelands were my books.
~ Marguerite Yourcenar
For many years I have used a copy of The Billy Graham Christian Worker’s Handbook: A Topical Guide with Biblical Answers to the Urgent Concerns of Our Day
Take a look at it it and let me know what you think.
__________
RELATED CONTENT
__________
Bill Wallace of China
In a chapel sermon at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Dr. Paige Patterson recommended reading “Bill Wallace of China.” Most people know of William Wallace of Scotland through Mel Gibson’s movie “Braveheart,” but relatively few have heard of William Wallace of China. What a shame. . . .
I have had this book in my personal library for several decades but it never seemed to make its way to the top of the “next to be read” stack of books that I keep by my bedside. Like most book lovers I have a problem . . . a big problem . . . well, an obsession – - – I buy more books than I can read. If I started reading right now and read twelve hours a day for the rest of my life I would not be able to read even half of the books in my personal library. So, it is not uncommon for me to own but neglect a book. I regret that I neglected this book as long as I did.
When Dr. Patterson recommended this book I had just finished reading another book (Homer Hickam’s book The Coalwood Way
As a young man in Tennessee Bill Wallace felt called of God to prepare for service as a medical missionary. After completing his preparations he was appointed by the Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board (now International Mission Board) to serve in Southern China. Nothing so amazing there, . . . so why the book? Wallace served in China during the Boxer Rebellion, the Japanese invasion during World War II, and in the subsequent revolutionary war when the Communists wrested control from the Nationalists.
The book is full of drama, intrigue, and suspense. Without those elements the book would not succeed. But, what makes the book compelling is that the reader experiences Wallace in a similar fashion as did the Chinese people. The reader, like the Chinese, is introduced to the quiet unassuming Wallace, gradually comes to like Wallace, then respect him, love him and finally finds that Wallace’s life story compels both introspection and committed personal action.
I add my voice to Patterson’s in recommending this book. The book is a quick read, but the reader will take much away from it in terms of clearly defined informational content as well as a tacit knowledge that drives volitional intent.
__________
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- Hudson Taylor’s Spiritual Secret; Discussion Guide
- The Cross of Christ – J.C. Ryle
- The Unfathomable Riches of Christ, for All Peoples, Above All Powers, through the Church, by John Piper
What are the things in your life that invest you with energy and the things that suck it from the marrow of your bones? We all have our own personal lists. Consider this example: For my father, reaching out and caring for others going through times of difficulty was something on which he thrived. It made him more alive. It pumped him full of energy. I find myself fulfilling a similar role as my father that involves coming alongside people during difficult times. However, for me to feel the pain and anguish of others takes a heavy toll on mind and body.
Similarly, business meetings can be very exciting for some people as they share ideas, plan, and envision greater achievements. For others, business meetings are the bane of their existence.
Public speaking, time with family, television, yard work, ….. For some these are energy producers, for others they consume resources directly from the soul.
It behooves us all to consider the elements of our lives and determine what it is that makes us feel more alive and what doesn’t. And, I think it would be wrong to assign moral significance to this list. The fact that you are drained by being in front of people, does not mean that you are a bad leader. Being personally overwhelmed by the burdens and cares of others does not mean you are immature or uncaring. In fact, it may mean just the opposite; that you are so present in the situation that you cannot detach yourself from it.
So, create your lists. What are the things that enliven you? Golf, teaching, discussions with friends, poetry, ebooks, a good sermon . . . Now, what are the things that add weight to your soul? Traffic, watching the news, email, cartoons . . .
Just because something is on “list one” does not necessarily make it a priority. And, just because something is on “list two” does not mean we should refrain from engaging in it. However, thoughtful consideration of the elements of our lives can definitely help us to live a more balanced and fulfilled life.
Your list will not be the same as that of anyone else. You are unique.
For me, bookstores are the most energizing environment in the world. To walk through the doors, smell the print, see the rows upon rows and stacks upon stacks of printed matter is more invigorating than are anabolic steroids for players in Major League Baseball. Knowing that between the covers of the books on the shelves lies all the greatest ideas in the history of mankind, knowing that most great men can date turning points in their lives to the reading of particular books, knowing that only feet away from where I stand are concealed truths I have not yet thought … There aren’t words to describe the experience.
And, of course, Borders is my favorite bookshop in world. While reading Sven Birkerts’ book The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age I came across the following quote which describes the invigorating quality to his experience as an employee of Borders.
“My whole relation to books was changed again. All contemplative distance was shattered. I was not there to thumb through offbeat volumes–I was stacking and sorting the brand-new stuff. Everything was glossy and crisp. And, I thought, cutting-edge. I felt as if everyone were just waking up to books as I was. Suddenly there were thousands of serious readers in town. They thronged the aisles of the store, asked questions, placed orders. The books had an aura, an excitement about them. And just moving the titles back and forth, getting them onto the shelves and into the hands of customers was an education. For the first time I caught a sense of what a genuine intellectual life might be like. This was a sense I had never had in college, no matter how challenging a given course may have been. That was packaged thought, with everything already subjected to institutional dry-cleaning. This was different; this was hands-on. I saw my role as quasi-priestly: I was channeling the nourishing word to the people who wanted it most.”
Let me encourage you to find time today to do at least one item from your “list one”. Me? I’m on my way to Borders to drink a cup of coffee and browse the shelves for something I have not yet conceived.
(A note for my SWBTS students:) You have been asking what textbooks I will be using next semester. Hopefully, this advance notice will allow you to shop for the best prices. You will find below a list of the textbooks for the three sections I am teaching.
CHURCH AND EMPIRES (sections 1203a and 1203b)
- A Short History of Byzantium
, by John Julius Norwich – isbn. 0679772693
- The Middle Ages
, by Morris Bishop – isbn 061805703X
- Medieval Philosophy (A New History of Western Philosophy, Vol. 2)
, by Anthony Kenny – isbn. 0198752741
EARLY WESTERN CIVILIZATION (section 1103A)
- The History of the Ancient World: From the Earliest Accounts to the Fall of Rome
, by Susan Wise Bauer – isbn 039305974X
- Israel and the Nations: The History of Israel from the Exodus to the Fall of the Second Temple
, by F.F. Bruce – isbn 0830815104
I am making some adjustments to the syllabus, but it should be available via Blackboard sometime during the next few weeks. If you want to do so pre-reading, I suggest starting with what interests you as you are more likely to stick with it that way. However, the texts will be tackled pretty much in the order you find them listed above. Enjoy!
To Kill A Mockingbird
I recently read To Kill A Mockingbird
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…but as I inched sluggishly along the treadmill of the Maycomb County school system, I could not help receiving the impression that I was being cheated out of something. Out of what I knew not, yet I did not believe that twelve years of unrelieved boredom was exactly what the state had in mind for me.
~ The character Scout Finch, in To Kill A Mockingbird
“You are too young to understand it,” she said, “but sometimes the Bible in the hand of one man is worse than a whiskey bottle in the hand of –oh, of your father.”
~ The character Miss Maudie Atkinson, in To Kill A Mockingbird
“Were you playing cards?”
Jem fielded Dill’s fly with his eyes shut: “No sir, just with matches.”
I admired my brother. Matches were dangerous, but cards were fatal.
~ The character Scout Finch, in To Kill A Mockingbird
For reasons unfathomable to the most experienced prophets in Maycomb County, autumn turned to winter that year. We had two weeks of the coldest weather since 1885, Atticus said. Mr. Avery said it was written on the Rosetta Stone that when children disobeyed their parents, smoked cigarettes and made war on each other, the seasons would change: Jem and I were burdened with the guilt of contributing to the aberrations of nature, thereby causing unhappiness to our neighbors and discomfort to ourselves.
~ The character Scout Finch, in To Kill A Mockingbird
“They’re certainly entitled to think that, and they’re entitled to full respect for their opinions,” said Atticus, “but before I can live with other folks I’ve got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.”
~ The character Atticus, in To Kill A Mockingbird
I wanted you to see something about her–I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do.
~ The character Atticus, in To Kill A Mockingbird
To all parties present and participating in the life of the county, Aunt Alexandra was one of the last of her kind: she had river-boat, boarding-school manners; let any moral come along and she would uphold it; she was born in the objective case; she was an incurable gossip. When Aunt Alexandra went to school, self-doubt could not be found in any textbook, so she knew not its meaning. She was never bored, and given the slightest chance she would exercise her royal prerogative: she would arrange, advise, caution, and warn.
~ The character Scout Finch, in To Kill A Mockingbird
Atticus was proceeding amiably, as if he were involved in a title dispute. With his infinite capacity for calming turbulent seas, he could make a rape case as dry as a sermon.
~ The character Scout Finch, in To Kill A Mockingbird
You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view — until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.
~ the character Atticus
As you grow older you’ll see white men cheat black men every day of your life, but let me tell you something and don’t you forget it— whenever a white man does that to a black man, no matter who he is, how rich he is, of how fine a family he comes from, that white man is trash.
~ the character Atticus
It’s not okay to hate anybody.
~ the character Atticus
Jem see if you can stand in Bob Ewell’s shoes a minute. I destroyed his last shred of credibility at that trial, if he had any to begin with. The man had to have some kind of comeback, his kind always does. So if spitting in my face and threatening me saved Mayella Ewell one extra beating, that’s something I’ll gladly take. He had to take it out on somebody and I’d rather it be me than that household full of children out there.
~ the character Atticus
* * *
And, there was the passage from the book that I shared HERE.
* * *
Some of you may remember that To Kill A Mockingbird
Other books in the top ten are shown below.
I always look forward to finding out what audio book ChristianAudio.com is going to offer as their free download of the month. I have acquired some great audio books this way.
John Piper’s Desiring God is this month’s free download. Great book, great price (did I mention it was free?).
Click on through to ChristianAudio.com and get your free copy sometime during November, 2009.
“Mind-hammering and heart-warming, Desiring God ignites a passion for God that would set the world ablaze if it were the norm and not the exception today.” (Os Guiness)
“The healthy biblical realism of this study in Christian motivation comes as a breath of fresh air. Jonathan Edwards, whose ghost walks through most of Piper’s pages, would be delighted with his disciple.” (J.I. Packer)
“This book profoundly influenced my life.” (Jerry Bridges)
__________
Related Content
- John Piper’s Sermons From Ephesians
- Free Audio Lectures, Seminars, Sermons & Debates
- Summer Listening
__________
I love to hear about the books that others are reading. Have one to share?
It is also intriguing to look at what books (music, etc.) people buy from Amazon after clicking through from this website. I always discover some really cool stuff by browsing the results. Check it out — the following are items that since April people have purchased from Amazon after clicking through from KevinStilley.com.
First, a few thoughts about the list:
- I reviewed Len Sweet’s book So Beautiful: Divine Design for Life and the Church
indicating that it was horrible and recommending that no one waste their time on such gibberish. After which, someone clicked through from my review and purchased the book. I guess they showed me!
- Several of my favorite books show up on this list, including Quo Vadis
.
- The list includes some excellent exegetical and theological reference works such as A Theology of the New Testament
and Ephesians: An Exegetical Commentary
and the ESV Study Bible.
And, now for the list . . .
BOOKS
- 100 Most Important Events in Christian History, The
- 101 Questions to Ask Before You Get Engaged
- A Theology of the New Testament
- A Time of Departing
- After the Locusts: Restoring Ruined Dreams, Reclaiming Wasted Years
- Awareness
- Be Confident (Hebrews): Live by Faith, Not by Sight (The BE Series Commentary)
- Be Mature (James): Growing Up in Christ (The BE Series Commentary)
- Be Rich (Ephesians): Gaining the Things That Money Can’t Buy (The BE Series Commentary)
- Dear and Glorious Physician, A Novel about Saint Luke
- Deceived on Purpose
- ESV Study Bible (Black)
- Eldership in Action: Through Biblical Governance of the Church
- Electrical Power Systems Quality
- Encountering God in the Psalms
- Ephesians: An Exegetical Commentary
- Fundamentals Of Electric Power Quality
- Halley’s Bible Handbook with the New International VersionDeluxe Edition
- Humor: The Magic of Genie
- Is Sex Necessary?: Or, Why You Feel the Way You Do (Harper colophon books)
- Journey to the End of the Night
- Looking at Philosophy: The Unbearable Heaviness of Philosophy Made Lighter
- Mayberry Humor Across the U. S. A.
- Pensees (Penguin Classics)
- Quo Vadis
- So Beautiful: Divine Design for Life and the Church
- Social Justice & the Christian Church
- Taking Back the United Methodist Church
- The Emergent Church- Undefining Christianity
- The Gnostic Empire Strikes Back: An Old Heresy for the New Age
- The Heart of the Artist
- The Huguenots: Fighters for God and human freedom
- The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief
- The Last Books of H.G. Wells: The Happy Turning: A Dream of Life & Mind at the End of its Tether
- The Letter to the Ephesians (Pillar New Testament Commentary)
- The Liberated Imagination: Thinking Christianly About the Arts (Wheaton Literary Series)
- The Lost Symbol
- The Mentor’s Guide to Biblical Eldership: Twelve Lessons for Mentoring Men to Eldership
- The New Interpreter’s Bible: Kings – Judith (Volume 3)
- The New Interpreter’s Bible: Numbers – Samuel (Volume 2)
- The New Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible: Large Print Edition
- The Prophet
- The Road Less Traveled, 25th Anniversary Edition : A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth
- The Shack
- The Silver Chalice (Loyola Classic)
- The Unity Factor
- Trusting God: Even When Life Hurts
- Turning Points: Decisive Moments in the History of Christianity
- West with the Night
- Wiersbe’s Expository Outline on the New Testament (Warren Wiersbe)
KINDLE EBOOKS
MP3 DOWNLOADS
DVD, ELECTRONICS & MISCELLANEOUS
* * * * *
Do you have thoughts on any of the above items?
Brainiac is a fascinating piece of autoethnography. Ken Jennings takes you behind the scenes of his amazing 75 appearances on Jeapardy, and into the heart of a trivia loving subculture.
Ken Jennings became a household name during his unprecedented 75 game streak on Jeapardy in which he piled up $2.5 million in winnings. There are the numerous television game shows, but there is a fascinating world of trivia lovers competing and collecting in relative anonymity; the College Quiz Bowls (and its spinoffs, ACf & NAQT), NTN and locally produced trivia in pubs and restaurants scattered across the nation, the nation’s largest trivia contest held in Wisconsin in which a whole town becomes involved… and of course that Trivial Pursuit board game that is tucked away in your closet as it is in 10% of American households. Ken Jennings blends personal revelation with investigative reporting in this masterful narrative of the world of trivia.
I loved the book and encourage you to read it. In addition to enjoying the reading experience, you will probably learn a few things along the way such as;
- The name given to the groove above your upper lip and running from nose to mouth is “philtrum”.
- Igor Sikorsky invented the helicopter.
- Hydrologically speaking, Lake Michigan and Lake Huron are a single lake.
tolle lege
* * * * * * *
Stylistically this book made me think of some of previous reads such as Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War
* * * * * * *
I prepared the following book discussion guide for use with the pastors and staff at Bent Tree. Feel free to use it with your own group if you think it will be beneficial.
* * *
Hudson Taylor’s Spiritual Secrets
Discussion Guide
Prolegomena
Who were the authors and why did they write it? How would the book have been different had it been written by someone who did not personally know Taylor? Do you see any disadvantages to a family member as storyteller?
Was the book interesting? Enjoyable to read?
Did this book make you uncomfortable?
Did you learn anything about prayer? Vision? Obedience? Love? Trust? Passion?
Chapter 1
Going back to the title of the book, what is Hudson Taylor’s spiritual secret?
Chapter 2
His salvation experience is presented as somewhat whimsical experience. Is it? Note the question he asked of himself, “Why does the author use those words [“finished work of Christ”]… why does he not say, ‘the atoning or propitiatory work of Christ’?”
Chapter 3
How did Hudson Taylor experience a call to China? Do you think this is typical of most ministry “callings”?
His new life “unified in one great purpose and prayer” included preparation and sacrifice. How so? Is that typical
Chapter 4
Taylor would not accept help from family members because he was training himself to depend only upon God. Despite his employers request that Taylor tell him when his wages were due, Taylor did not because he was relying only on prayer. What did you think of this? Is this something that is normative?
Chapter 5
80% of seminary and Bible school graduates who enter the ministry will leave the ministry within the first five years. When Taylor arrived in China, there was plenty of incentive to go home. Why did he stay? Why do most seminarians leave?
The poor handling of practical matters by the leadership of his mission society made an indelible impression upon Hudson about the nature of leadership. Do you think there is any truth to the old stereotype of Christians pondering eternal truths but being bad managers of temporal responsibilities?
Chapter 6
Taylor knew that going native in dress and style would mean social ostracism from his Western peers. Can you think of any New Testament passages that relate to this?
At the end of this chapter, it tells of Taylor’s disappointment about not being able to continue his work with Mr. Burns in Swato. “Yet but for this great and unexpected trial Hudson Taylor might never have been led into the lifework that was awaiting him; might never have known the love beyond all other human love which was to be his crowning joy and blessings.” Do you think this kind of recollection is common among men? Is it biblical? Do these kinds of stories help others who are going through disappointment? Do you think that those who have a poor understanding of the sovereignty of God go through life more disappointed and saddened than others?
“It was one of not a few hard lessons through which Hudson Taylor was learning to think of God as The One Great Circumstance of Life, and of all lesser, external circumstances as necessarily the kindest, wisest, best, because either ordered or permitted by Him.”
Chapter 7
[mushy love stuff]
Chapter 8
Taylor was careful not to employ new converts in mission activities for fear that the money would decrease their influence and impede their spiritual growth. Why?
Pilgrim’s Progress was used in the training of Chinese converts. This is one of the most influential books in all of Western literature. Most Christians today are not as familiar with it as they were in previous generations. Is this a sign of imminent apocalypse?
Hudson Taylor took on responsibility for Dr. Parker’s Ningpo hospital with no visible means of supporting the work. “The secret of faith that is ready for emergencies is the quiet, practical dependence upon God day by day which makes Him real to the believing heart.” How does one cultivate quiet, practical, day by day dependence upon God?
Chapters 9, 10, 11
What did you think of Hudson Taylor’s approach to faith missions? Did you approve of his refusal to have a guarantee fund? I once knew a preacher who refused to have health insurance for his family because he believed it showed a lack of faith in God to take care of him. Is this the same thing?
Chapters 12,13
Your facilitator thinks that this section is artistically brilliant which culminates in these words, “Faith in Jesus crucified is the way of peace to the sinner; so faith in Jesus risen is the way of daily salvation to the saint. You cannot be your own Saviour, either in whole or in part.”
Why is this artistically brilliant?
Chapter 14
What is the “exchanged life” as illustrated in this chapter?
Things to consider
- Quote on page 161
- Opening to Augustine’s Confessions
- Galatians 2:20
- Have you ever heard a coach tell a player “You are trying too hard”?
Chapter 15
What do you think about them sending their children back to Europe and staying in China to do missions?
Chapter 4 was introduced with this statement of Hudson Taylor, “I never made a sacrifice.” Is this true?
His family was also forced to sacrifice. What do you think about this? Are family responsibilities secondary to ministry responsibilities?
Chapter 16
It is interesting to note that some of the anti-missionary movements that were current at the time of Taylor used similar reasoning for not sending missionaries as Hudson used for not letting people know of financial needs. Whereas Hudson said “If God wants there to be a witness he will fund it” the anti-missionary advocates said “If God wants them saved He will save them.” What, if any, is the difference in these positions?
Chapter 17
What was his secret?
Chapter 18
According to Taylor, the hardest part of a missionary career is to maintain regular, prayerful bible study. Do you think this is true for Christian ministers in other fields of endeavor?
Afterwards
What is the purpose of this book? Does the book achieve its purpose?
Taylor’s missionary work was set in China? How would his methods translate into other cultures?
Effects of the book:
- Did this book affect you emotionally? Spiritually?
- Did this book have an effect on your missionary understanding? Missionary commitments?
- What do you take away from reading it?
“Men are God’s method. The church is looking for better methods; God is looking for better men.“ (E.M. Bounds)
