Since the primary motive of the evil is disguise, one of the places evil people are most likely to be found is within the church. What better way to conceal one’s evil from oneself as well as from others than to be a deacon or some other highly visible form of Christian within our culture.
– M. Scott Peck
http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/3061.M_Scott_Peck
“If someone is still trying to work through the difficult parts of their trauma then they shouldn’t be playing grownup games with grownup people in a grownup forum. To be very clear: it’s your responsibility to make sure you can handle your own shit before you step out your front door and engage with the world. It is not the world’s responsibility to bend over backwards to make people comfortable when they haven’t spent the requisite time coming to terms with their own lives.”
~”Austerus,” FetLifer (posted with permission)
The Non-Conformist Conscience makes cowards of us all.
– Sir Max Beerbohm
http://www.answers.com/topic/conscience
I feel compelled to make another ‘nonapology.’ Many readers are likely to be concerned about my use of masculine pronouns in relation to God. I think I both understand and appreciate this concern. It is a matter to which I have given much thought. I have generally been a strong supporter of the women’s movement and action that is reasonable to combat sexist language. But first of all, God is not neuter. He is exploding with life and love and even sexuality of a sort. So ‘It’ is not appropriate. Certainly I consider God androgynous. He is as gentle and tender and nurturing and maternal as any woman could ever be. Nonetheless, culturally determined though it may be, I subjectively experience His reality as more masculine than feminine. While He nurtures us, He also desires to penetrate us, and while we more often than not flee from His love like a reluctant virgin, He chases after us with a vigor in the hunt that we most typically associate with males. As CS Lewis put it, in relation to God we are all female. Moreover, whatever our gender or conscious theology, it is our duty—our obligation—in response to His love to attempt to give birth, like Mary, to Christ in ourselves and in others.
I shall, however, break with tradition and use the neuter for Satan. While I know Satan to be lustful to penetrate us, I have not in the least experienced this desire as sexual or creative—only hateful and destructive. It is hard to determine the sex of a snake.
– M. Scott Peck, in People of the Lie
http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/3061.M_Scott_Peck
You can take one arrow and break it in half.
But if you take 12 arrows in a bundle, it’s
Almost impossible to break any of them. There
Is strength in Unity. When we are together we
Are very powerful. This is the way the
Ancestors told us we need to be. Strong. We need to
Unite ourselves. This is why the Elders say,
When we make decisions, we must first consider
The good of the people. If every person
In the community thinks this way, then we will
Always make strong decisions.
Creator, let my decisions have the strength of the bundle.
– Prayer of Tecumseh of the Shawnee
http://echotacherokeetribe.homestead.com/INSPIRATION.html
The problem of unmet expectations in marriage is primarily a problem of stereotyping. Each and every human being on this planet is a unique person. Since marriage is inevitably a relationship between two unique people, no one marriage is going to be exactly like any other. Yet we tend to wed with explicit visions of what a “good” marriage ought to be like. Then we suffer enormously from trying to force the relationship to fit the stereotype and from the neurotic guilt and anger we experience when we fail to pull it off.
– M. Scott Peck, in Search of Stones
http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/3061.M_Scott_Peck
Conscience is that still, small voice that tells us what other people should do.
– Ronald Reagan, from his personal journal