Inspirational Quotes by Peter Kreeft

“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.”

“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. – Pois é, temos que ser moderados – disse eu, com um sorriso.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Jesus é a única Pessoa a quem você tem de prestar contas. Quando você tem Jesus diante de si, o que é que consegue lhe dizer com a consciência tranquila?”

“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.”

“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!”

“Gimli’s story is different. Beginning from a similarly prideful starting point, the process of change is long, slow, and far from smooth. But it is a path walked with courage. From Dwarf-only upringing to cross-cultural bridge-builder, and from obstinate and stubborn to humbly teachable, his is a journey that is completely alien to his people. Seen in this light, engaging and honouring the distrusted and unknown is in itself an act of courage, and undergoing an existential journey of self-discovery requires strength of character. Gimli never becomes less a dwarf—strength and courage are still at the heart of all he does—but he reapplies those traits in a wiser way.”

“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.”

“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.”

“The path of acceptance is the one you walk with peace, but peace does not mean the alleviation of suffering. Peace is that deep, interior stillness that tells you that no matter what kind of catastrophe might be happening in your life or in the world, everything is going to be OK. It is the sense that there is a meaning to all of this, even if you can’t understand it. It is the sense that someone bigger than you is in charge, that the weight of the world does not rest on your shoulders, and that it is OK to break down and not be “strong enough” (no one is strong enough). The reality is that no matter how much money you make, how great a family you have or come from, how successful you’ve been in life, or how many people count on you to take care of things, you still know deep down that it could all fall apart at any moment. The path of acceptance is the realization that it is OK to be in need, like a child, which resonates with the deep sense that you really are just a child. You actually can’t stop tragedy from happening, you can’t block suffering, and you are not strong enough to protect yourself from every possible danger. This is the sense of being a child, and the only way to peace is to know it is OK to be a child because you have a Father who loves you and takes care of you.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“In practice I regarded prayer as somehow more spiritual than sitting on a committee, preaching as more anointed than plumbing. Only the revelation of Christ's Humanity infused vigor into my bloodless theoretical doctrine.”

“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.”