‘But what have either of them ever done except learn Latin? Have they ever planted a field of wheat? Set up a factory? Dug a canal? They were born, Sharpe, that's all that ever happened to them, they were born.’ #bookoftheday #booksky #books #Sharpe

‘God invites us, entices us, provokes us and waits for us to share himself … so in our life, pilgrimage and ministry now he is inviting us to share in discovery, developing and showing partial and temporary outcomes of and preprations for his love, beauty, joy, purpose and peace.’ #booksky #books

‘Whenever you feel like criticising any one, just remember that all of the people in the world haven't had the advantages that you've had.’ #bookoftheday #booksky #books #Gatsby

‘This much is certain, that we have no theological right to set any sort of limits to the loving-kindness of God which has appeared in Jesus Christ. Our theological duty is to see and understand it as being still greater than we had seen before.’ #bookoftheday #booksky #books #Barth

‘We are all called to take new steps of faith that involve leaving our comfort zones - whether that is by choice, or more often than not, being forced out of the safety of the nest we have known.’ #bookoftheday #booksky #books

‘He was from Yorkshire, or somewhere like that, and like many Northerners with issues, he'd moved to London as a cheap alternative to psychotherapy.’ #bookoftheday #booksky #books

‘“È un diavolo incarnato! You know the proverb?” She did not. Nor did it seem applicable to a young man who had spent a quiet winter in Rome with his mother. But Cecil, since his engagement, had taken to affect a cosmopolitan naughtiness which he was far from possessing.’ #bookoftheday #booksky

‘it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it … anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.’ #bookoftheday #booksky #books

‘Sometimes thinking is like talking to another person, but that person is also you.’ #bookoftheday #booksky #books #Pratchett

‘Sometimes, when you were thinking about something, trying to understand it, it opened up in your head without you expecting it to, like it was a soft spongy light unfolding, and you understood, it made sense forever’ #bookoftheday #booksky #books

‘Sometimes at that moment a wave of light breaks into our darkness, and it is as though a voice were saying: "You are accepted. You are accepted, accepted by that which is greater than you, and the name of which you do not know.”’ #bookoftheday #booksky #books

‘I suppose … you will tell me roundly that God's reach is longer than man's.’ ‘It had better be,’ said Brother Cadfael very solemnly, ‘otherwise we are all lost.’ #Bookoftheday #Booksky #Books #Cadfael

‘we cannot turn the clock back, and it would be stupid to pretend that life anywhere in today's world is the same as the life of New Testament times. But people are the same, and the basic problems of human relationships are the same.’ #bookoftheday #booksky #books

‘Men! It’s not that they’re brutish, boorish, shallow and insensitive – though I dare say many are. It’s just that they’re so damned blind. So incredibly stupid. Men in myth and fiction at least. In real life we are keen, clever and entirely without fault of course.’ #bookoftheday #booksky

‘Our duty, Richard, is to be decorative and stay alive long enough to be promoted. But no one expects us to be useful! Good God! A junior officer being useful? That'll be the day.’ #bookoftheday #booksky #books #Sharpe

‘a sound arose of endless interchanging melodies woven in harmony that passed beyond hearing into the depths and into the heights … and the music and the echo of the music went out into the Void, and it was not void.’ #bookoftheday #booksky #books #Tolkien

It is in the ordinary congregation, warts and all, that most Christians most of the time have found God and become transformed. It is finally through singing unsingable hymns, loving irritating neighbors, listening to boring sermons … that we become ourselves.’ #bookoftheday #booksky #books

‘Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny. Free men pull in all kinds of direc-tions. He smiled. 'It's the only way to make progress.’ #bookoftheday #booksky #books #Pratchett

‘By slowing down and observing the creativity and ingenuity of the biblical authors, we are able to ask the questions that these authors were trying to answer. Reading deliberately permits us to read the Old Testament on the writers' terms.’ #bookoftheday #booksky #books

‘God is "beyond”, beyond our heart and mind, beyond our feelings and thoughts, beyond our expectations and desires, and beyond all the events and experiences that make up our life. Still he is in the centre of all of it.’ #bookoftheday #booksky #books

‘As Jesus was law incarnate, so he was love incarnate, and following his way of self-giving is holiness in its purest and most perfect expression. Hard, harsh, cold-hearted holiness is a contradiction in terms.’ #bookoftheday #booksky #books

‘There is no profit in ifs. We go on from where we stand, we answer for our own evil, and leave to God our good.’ #bookoftheday #booksky #books #Cadfael

‘Human beings seem framed to pose problems for themselves that they cannot solve, pit themselves against the dark world of uncreated reality, and find that living with such unknowing is a source of astonishment and delight.’ #bookoftheday #booksky #books

‘Of course in the Anglican Church whether or not one believes in God tends to get sidestepped. It's not quite in good taste. Someone said that the Church of England is so constituted that its members can really believe anything, but of course almost none of them do.’ #bookoftheday #booksky

‘The world needs the church, but not to help it run more smoothly or make it a better and safer place for Christians to live. Rather, the world needs the church because without the church the world does not know what it is nor who God is.’ #bookoftheday #booksky #books #Hauerwas

‘So sanity is not a requisite of soldiering.’ #bookoftheday #booksky #books #Sharpe

‘we never see the true state of our condition till it is illustrated to us by its contraries; nor know how to value what we enjoy, but by the want of it.’ #bookoftheday #booksky #books

‘Holy living is not reserved for the spiritually elite. Nor is it achieved through heroic spiritual disciplines. Holy living is the birthright of every believer in Christ. The power of grace can transform us from alienation and sin to reflect the character of Christ.’ #bookoftheday #booksky

‘It wasn't just that his brain was writing cheques that his body couldn't cash. It had gone beyond that. Now his feet were borrowing money that his legs hadn't got, and his back muscles were looking for loose change under the sofa cushions.’ #bookoftheday #booksky #books #Pratchett

‘For him the great myths of the Bible as well as of pagan literature refer not to the nonhistorical but rather to the nondescribable.’ #bookoftheday #booksky #books

‘I am positive I have a soul; nor can all the books with which materialists have pester’d the world ever convince me to the contrary.’ #bookoftheday #booksky #books

‘In the multitude of counsellors there is safety, but perhaps the safety is all the greater if among that multitude there are those who do not hesitate to speak the disagreeable and contrary word.’ #bookoftheday #booksky #books

‘I have been bent and broken, but - I hope - into a better shape.’ #bookoftheday #booksky #books #Dickens

‘The church's response to social disadvantage is often a choice between a being-for approach of advocacy and campaigning and a working-for approach of seeking to solve a person's problems … But transformation comes about most truly from an ethic of being with.’ #bookoftheday #booksky #books

‘sometimes I like to put the sand of doubt into the oyster of my faith.’ #bookoftheday #booksky #books #Cadfael

‘I try to remember that guidance is sought only as part of a certain kind of life: one of loving, ongoing relationship with the Guide. It is not fortune-telling we are about … We seek an increase of the wisdom of the Lord.’ #bookoftheday #booksky #books

‘How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?’ #bookoftheday #booksky #books

‘His sensationalism cannot be denied. He adopted it when it seemed to be the best lever wherewith to prise open the insensitive mind.’ #bookoftheday #booksky #books

‘Reading is my favourite occupation, when I have leisure for it and books to read.´ #bookoftheday #booksky #books

‘If we only ever read and preach the New Testament, it is like wanting to live in the top storey of a house without having the foundation and lower storeys or wanting to enjoy the fruit of a tree while cutting out the roots and sawing up the trunk.’ #bookoftheday #booksky #books

‘Only a fool takes pride in pretending that a skill he doesn’t possess is worthless.’ #bookoftheday #booksky #books #Sharpe

‘Without some measure of solitude and silence it is impossible to find, beneath all the fragmented parts of our lives, the still centre where God dwells. It is as if we live on the windswept turbulent surface of life and never dive into the deep stillness of God.’ #bookoftheday #booksky #books

‘When people say, “I've told you fifty times”, / They mean to scold, and very often do; / When poets say, “I've written fifty rhymes”, / They make you dread that they'll recite them too’ #bookoftheday #booksky #books #poetry #Byron

‘Worship is nothing more nor less than love on its knees before the beloved; just as mission is love on its feet to serve the beloved’ #bookoftheday #booksky #books

‘Your brain, Peekay, has two functions; it is a place for original thought, but also it is a reference library. Use it to tell you where to look, and then you will have for yourself all the brains that have ever been.’ #bookoftheday #booksky #books

‘Books that were all about the world tended to be written by people who knew all about books rather than all about the world.’ #bookoftheday #booksky #books #Pratchett

‘We need to become better at thanking and honouring those who get little if any notice, whose patient quiet service keeps the show on the road, who are as far from celebrities as you can get but who, neverthe-less, are vital to God's mission in the world.’ #bookoftheday #booksky #books

‘The wise know their limitations; the foolish do not.’ #bookoftheday #booksky #books

‘Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away … Those that truly love have roots that grow towards each other underground, and, when all the pretty blossoms have fallen from their branches, they find that they are one tree and not two.’ #bookoftheday #booksky #books

‘It is this seemingly natural urge to get our own back … which makes the Christian teaching about the forgiveness of injuries seem so idealistic and impracticable, and he who advocates it an impossible dreamer who lives with his head in the clouds.’ #bookoftheday #booksky #books