Inspirational Quotes by Peter Kreeft

“City of God interprets all of the human story, from Creation to the Last Judgment, as the drama of divine providence and human free choice, especially the choice between the two most fundamental options of membership in one or the other of the "two cities." The City of God is the invisible community of all who love God; the City of the World is all those who love the world and themselves as their God.”

“Dostoyevsky says, “love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams” (The Brothers Karamazov).”

“No story is more beautiful than the Gospel, even though it is a story full of pain and nails and hate and blood and sin and murder and betrayal and forsakenness and unimaginable agony and death. It is the story of what happens to the most beautiful thing, Perfect Love, when it enters our world: it comes to a Cross, to the crossroad between good and evil. All our most beautiful stories are like the Gospel: they are tragedies first, and then comedies; they are crosses and then crowns. They are crosses because they are conflicts between good and evil. That is the fundamental plot of every great story. To say "that story is beautiful" means "that story resembles the Gospel." If you are bored by the Gospel, that puts no black eye on the Gospel, but on you. Most likely, it means you have never listened to it. You must have heard it, but hearing is far from the same thing as listening...”

“Not all who listen, believe. If you call the Gospel a crazy fairy tale, a far-too-good-to-be-true myth, an insane extension of wishful thinking, or even a blasphemous lie, I will respect you and argue with you. But if you call it a platitude, I can only pity you, for that means you have never listened to it.”

“Christ changed every human being he ever met. In fact, He changed history, splitting it open like a coconut and inserting eternity into the split between B.C. and A.D. If anyone claims to have met Him without being changed, he has not met Him at all. When you touch Him, you touch lightning. Socrates is puzzled because he is looking for the burn marks.”

“Your problem, however big it is (or however small), is His wise and loving will to you, even though it may not look wise or loving. It is His deliberate permissive will. And your response to it is your response to Him.”

“Reason and truth themselves that are in question? Socrates never visited these terrifying heights and depths; they are distinctively modern and post-Christian. Socrates was a simple virgin; Christians are like married women (married to God), and modernists are like divorcees.”

“Since we can hold only a limited number of things at once in our working memory, we tend to get very frustrated when the memory banks fill up. The more we are expected to accomplish at once, the slower our processing speed gets. It’s like opening multiple windows on the computer. If you start too many programs without shutting others down, the computer slows down.”

“Pouco antes da licenciatura, dei-me conta de que não sabia se Scott desejava ou não ter uma família numerosa. Eu sempre desejara ter pelo menos quatro ou cinco filhos. Por isso, como por acaso, puxei o tema: – Você quer ter filhos, não quer? – Bom, não filhos demais. Ah, não! – pensei eu – Agora acontece que é um partidário do “crescimento zero” da população! Procurando manter o tom indiferente, perguntei-lhe: – Quantos seriam demais? – Não sei... – disse ele – Acho que nos devemos limitar a uns cinco ou seis. Mal podia acreditar no que ouvia.”

“Having mindful awareness of the other person means hearing and understanding the thoughts and feelings of the person talking to you, without the filter of your own autopilot interpretations. As someone is talking to you about his or her perspective, especially in an emotionally charged conversation, you are certainly going to have all kinds of thoughts that cross your mind. You will be refuting the other perspective if it goes against yours, you will be figuring out where the holes are in the story or how the past events are being misremembered, or you will simply be thinking about how you are so misunderstood. This can happen in a boardroom or a bedroom. It happens anywhere there are two people with different perspectives. Those thoughts are like clouds floating past in the sky, and your practice as someone in the listening role should be to turn back to the present experience of the other person’s thoughts and feelings that are being expressed. Just as you learn how to redirect your focus from critical thoughts about yourself when you are trying to pay attention to your breath, you can turn your focus away from critical thoughts of the person speaking and back to his or her actual thoughts and feelings.”

“Most of us are really good at knowing when we are in the expressing role. As St. Teresa of Ávila said, “Many people are good at talking but bad at understanding.” That’s because most of us always want to be in the expressing role. We feel like our perspective or opinion is vital to the conversation, more so than the other person’s, and so the motivation is to make sure that our side is understood.”

“God made your body with the capacity to feel physical consequences of the mental events occurring in your mind. In fact, he made your body capable of picking up on extremely subtle cues from the environment and other people, and even spiritual realities beyond the material world. God designed the body to act like a radar, detecting movements within and without to help you make informed decisions about your life.”

“Behind Boromir's testimony lurks something else that our modern world is desperately in need of: a sense that we live in a meaningful universe where nothing is accidental and where an overruling providence moves things forward in accordance with a higher plan. This promises as well that history is not merely a succession of unrelated events ("one darn thing after another"), but that it too is imbued with meaning, purpose, and direction. And if both the universe and history are meaningful, then perhaps we are as well.”

“When you ask them what’s wrong with the world, they never say there is not enough religion. They say there is not enough peace, prosperity, security, comfort, health care, or environmental responsibility. In other words, not enough human control over nature and human nature.”

“Somewhere along the way you may have developed a script for perfectionism, one that says you are not doing enough, are not good enough, or don’t work hard enough. This script perpetuates the doing mode, as it creates a near-constant problem to be solved. If this is true for you at some level, you are living in a perpetual state of escaping the hawk ready to swoop in on you at any moment. This mind-set reduces your creativity, closes off your perspective from the big picture, and prevents you from finding solutions to your actual, solvable problems with any outside-the-box thinking.”

“The beauty and the hope here is that who we are cannot be diminished by who we think we are.”

“whopper-stopper”

“Humans are the lowest (least intelligent) of spirits and the highest (most intelligent) of animals. We are rational animals, incarnate minds, the smartest of animals and the stupidest of spirits:”

“8. Charity (agape), or willing the good of the other. Since this love comes from the will rather than the feelings, and since angels have wills, angels have this love.”

“2. Greed, or acquisitive desire.”