Inspirational Quotes by Peter Kreeft

“Our flesh, having been worn by the Most High Himself is the most noble mantle of all. The Manicheans and Buddhists and Platonists on the one hand, who belittle this flesh, and the gluttons and lechers and egoists on the other, who are slaves to it, are still living in division.”

“Thus I found that I had been encamped with the ancient Arameans. They thought God was present only on the mountains;[10] I thought God was present only in the present.”

“Creativity is an essential element in problem solving, but it doesn’t work very well when anxiety is increasing”

“In the midst of our deepest pain, we want to be in control. We want to be able to ask why and have an answer that is acceptable to us. We want to rely on our own strength of mind. Yet this is not the way of faith, and it is not the path to holiness. It is not being as children who trust in a Father who loves us.”

“People’s experience of suffering is very much relative to their own lives. At the end of the day, every person has a choice to make about which path to take when confronted with suffering: avoidance or acceptance. Every difficulty you encounter comes with this choice.”

“You can quickly turn the time you spend being aware of your body as it is into a prayer of gratitude, wonder, and awe at the creation of your own being.”

“Saint Paul (whom I had thought of as the first Luther) taught in Romans, Galatians and elsewhere that justification was more than a legal decree; it established us in Christ as God’s children by grace alone. In fact, I discovered that nowhere did Saint Paul ever teach that we were justified by faith alone! Sola fide was unscriptural!”

“Curb your pride and your greed, or you will fall at the end of whatever path you take, though your hands be full of gold.”

“True mercy toward others, as with true forgiveness, requires a Christian disposition. As Christ said, even the sinners love their friends. It is easy to show kindness to people who are kind to us. It is easy to be charitable to those who are agreeable to us. The completely counterintuitive, radical proposal of Christianity, the thing that differs from every other world religion and makes us look like fools according to Scripture, is forgiveness of our enemies.”

“In all the realms of Middle-earth, Gondor is still clearly a special case. The problem with special cases is that when there is no greater good than self-preservation, all policies and tactics, however apparently immoral, become justifiable options.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“whopper-stopper”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”