Authors

"Seriousness is the Christian's ballast which keeps him from being overturned with vanity."

"Though the way of religion has thorns in it with respect to persecution, yet it is full of roses with respect to that inward peace and contentment that the soul finds in it."

"There is nothing that can hurt the soul but sin; it is not affliction that hurts it, it often makes it better, as the furnace makes gold the purer; but it is sin that damnifies."

"Obedience carries in it the life-blood of religion."

"The excellence of a thing is the end for which it was made; as of a star to give light, and of a plant to be fruitful. So the excellence of a Christian is to answer the end of his creation, which is to hallow God’s name, and live to that God by whom he lives."

"We may read many truths in the Bible, but we cannot know them savingly, till God by his Spirit shines upon our soul."

"Repentance is a grace of God's Spirit whereby a sinner is inwardly humbled and visibly reformed."

"O that we would therefore, while we are on this side of the grave, make our peace with God! Tomorrow may be our dying day; let this be our repenting day."

"In Adam we all suffered shipwreck and repentance is the only plank left us after shipwreck to swim to heaven."

"The first sermon that Christ preached, indeed, the first word of his sermon was 'Repent'."

"Repentance is a pure gospel grace. The covenant of works admitted no repentance; there it was, sin and die. Repentance came in by the gospel. Christ has purchased in his blood that repenting sinners shall be saved."

"The two great graces essential to a saint in this life are faith and repentance. These are the two wings by which he flies to heaven."

"...the vinegar of the law, then the wine of the gospel..."

"That preaching is to be preferred which makes the truest discovery of men's sins and shows them their hearts."

"...too much leniency emboldens sin..."

"Though heaven be given us freely, yet we must contend for it, "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might" (Eccl 9:10). Our work is great, our time short, our Master urgent. We have need therefore to summon together all the powers of our souls and strive as in a matter of life and death, that we may arrive at the kingdom above."

"When zeal like incense burns, first the lamp of knowledge must be lighted."

"Truth is unerring; it is the star which leads to Christ. Truth is pure (Psa 119:140)"

""The heavens being on fire shall be dissolved" (2 Peter 3:12), but not that truth which came from heaven (1 Peter 1:25)"

"Truth has noble effects. Truth is the seed of the new birth. God does not regenerate us by miracles or revelations, but by the word of truth (James 1:18). As truth is the breeder of grace, so it is the feeder of it (1Ti 4:6). Truth sanctifies: "Sanctify them through Thy truth" (John 17:17)."

"Truth is an antidote against error. Error is the adultery of the mind."

"Just so is the case of many; God gives them precious time in which they are to provide for a kingdom, and they waste this time of life and cut it all into chips. Let this excite violence in the things of God. It is the main errand of our living here..."

"¡Qué rico es ser boricua!"

"Untimely grave."

"And though he promise to his loss, He makes his promise good."

"The sweet remembrance of the just Shall flourish when he sleeps in dust."

"She twirls herself, turns round, twirls once more, posing, smiling, laughing, beckoning airily, drifts off, only to turn back beckoning, offering, repulsing, coolly firm, and then turns away, so that you think, well, it’s hopeless, when she glances back lightly, sidelong, her eyes opening, pupils wide, and wider yet, and she’s laughing at you, at you alone, laughing gaily, and you freeze, astonished, your throat constricting, as she hovers lovely and out of reach, out of reach and lovely, smiling at you, her head inclined aside, her hair brushing one cheek, there she is and yet not, unbelievable and simply gorgeous, and your heart tightens as she stands there so lovely, and out of reach."

"It is my belief that everyone is a stranger as an individual and since everyone is a stranger, that is precisely the reason we cannot question someone else’s strangeness or otherness. It is that simple. We ourselves are strangers. Often even to ourselves... And while people have some kind of desperate desire to belong somewhere, as I see it, many people also have a perpetual desire to be outsiders."

"I got out of the bathroom of course. I locked the front door and pushed the big wardrobe up against the bathroom door. I thought it'd be good to be careful. A little too late, maybe. I'm not leaving my apartment. I'm not gonna give it away. No. There's no reason I should. The noise from the bathroom was the shattering of my porcelain toilet bowl. They're in the bathroom. A lot. There's a lot of them. A bunch of sniffling snouts. A bunch of rats. They're already chewing the wardrobe. I'm standing in my room, listening to their swarming. Thousands of rats, in my apartment. All of them gnawing. I wait. Wait for them to get in. They'll be in here soon. It won't be long. They're coming. Rats. My rats. I'm waiting. What else can I do?"

"And be desired, she said while holding me in her arms: because happy are the desired, each and all, she said with eyes closed, in a desperate embrace. And our bodies cuddled up to each other. Happy are those who want to love, she said, today happy are the desired ones. I want you, she said, want your movements, because they all are good for me, want your caresses, because they all are good for me. Give you my untouched young body, because I’m yearning now for your embrace. I give you my vulnerable young body, because I am yearning --- even for pain. Desired you are, and I desire your desire, and do with me whatever you want to do, she said, for happy are the desired ones, each and all, and what I want to be is: desired-for-ever."

"Those we loved, they’re dead. Faces behind hands, shy shawls dropped, modestly awry. Those we love, they’re married."

"The Acol bidding system"

"Since it is probable that any book flying a bullet in its title is going to produce a corpse sooner or later - here it is."

"The sun, heavy-eyed from lack of sleep, owing to the system of a staggered summer time, stumbled into the heavens, and with a heavy sigh set about its duties."

"Vot", asked George I courteously, "is the difference between a public nuisance and a public convenience?"

"It takes a certain amount of sass to speak up for prose that's rich, succulent and full of novelty. Purple is immoral, undemocratic and insincere; at best artsy, at worst the exterminating angel of depravity."

"Humanism, it seems, is almost impossible in America where material progress is part of the national romance whereas in Europe such progress is relished because it feels nice."

"But what has happened is that the Indian State actively patronizes the exercise aimed at making all religions mean the same things, and persecutes those who defy the exercise. A whole army of 'secularist' scribes in the media and the academia has been employed and paid handsomely for whitewashing Islam and Christianity so that whatever is bigoted in the scriptures and blood-soaked histories of these creeds, is carefully exorcised. On the other hand, whatever is liberal and large-hearted, humane and civilized in the pluralistic spirituality of India is remorseless pruned to the prescribed and proper size. In the process, Christianity has been made to mean only the Sermon on the Mount, and Islam equated with two Quranic sentences torn out of context - "Unto you your religion, and unto me my religion" and "There is no compulsion in religion.""

"Ascribing human brotherhood, social justice, world peace, self-sacrifice and compassion to Christianity and Islam is tantamount to proclaiming that the wolf is a votary of vegetarianism."

"If the Hindus sang Vande Mãtaram in a public meeting, it was a ‘conspiracy’ to convert Muslims into kãfirs. If the Hindus blew a conch, or broke a coconut, or garlanded the portrait of a revered patriot, it was an attempt to ‘force’ Muslims into ‘idolatry’. If the Hindus spoke in any of their native languages, it was an ‘affront’ to the culture of Islam. If the Hindus took pride in their pre-Islamic heroes, it was a ‘devaluation’ of Islamic history. And so on, there were many more objections, major and minor, to every national self-expression. In short, it was a demand that Hindus should cease to be Hindus and become instead a faceless conglomeration of rootless individuals. On the other hand, the ‘minority community’ was not prepared to make the slightest concession in what they regarded as their religious and cultural rights. If the Hindus requested that cow-killing should stop, it was a demand for renouncing an ‘established Islamic practice’. If the Hindus objected to an open sale of beef in the bazars, it was an ‘encroachment’ on the ‘civil rights’ of the Muslims. If the Hindus demanded that cows meant for ritual slaughter should not be decorated and marched through Hindu localities, it was ‘trampling upon time-honoured Islamic traditions’. If the Hindus appealed that Hindu religious processions passing through a public thoroughfare should not be obstructed, it was an attempt to ‘disturb the peace of Muslim prayers’. If the Hindus wanted their native languages to attain an equal status with Urdu in the courts and the administration, it was an ‘assault on Muslim culture’. If the Hindus taught to their children the true history of Muslim tyrants, it was a ‘hate campaign against Islamic heroes’. And the ‘minority community’ was always ready to ‘defend’ its ‘religion and culture’ by taking recourse to street riots."

"As one reads the scriptures of Christianity and Islam with a morally alert mind, one starts getting sick of the very sound of word ‘god’ which word is littered all over this literature like dead leaves in autumn. The deeds which are ascribed to or approved of by this God are quite often so cruel and obnoxious as to leave one wondering that if these are the doings of the Divine, what else is there which is left for the Devil to do."

"Fundamentalism is as foreign to Hinduism as honesty is to Christian missions."

"Let it be realized by everybody concerned that India has always been and remains, the citadel of the most bigoted and bloodthirsty zealotry of Islam. The historical reasons for why it is so, are many. I do not have the time to detail them here. The main reason may be told. Islam in India has been what it has been because India has continued to stare at Islam as its greatest failure. Islam in India has never been able to relax, as it could do in countries which it converted completely. And it will not relax till Hindus learn to knock out its ideological fangs which are rooted in the Quran."

"No one has ever refuted him on facts, but many have sought to smear him and his writing. They have thereby transmuted the work from mere scholarship into warning. (...)The forfeiture is exactly the sort of thing which had landed us where we are: where intellectual inquiry is shut out; where our traditions are not examined, and reassessed; and where as a consequence there is no dialogue. It is exactly the sort of thing too which foments reaction. (...)"Freedom of expression which is legitimate and constitutionally protected," it [the Supreme Court] declared last year, "cannot be held to ransom by an intolerant group or people.""

"Once I had seen through the secularists, it was only logical that I would go and make my acquaintance with the people whom they always denounced with such holy indignation. Would those ugly Hindu monsters really be all that ugly? After reading the book History of Hindu-Christian Encounters, I sought out its author, and that's how I met Sita Ram Goel. Come to mention him, I found that in moral stature and depth of scholarship, he completely dwarfed the Stalinist "eminent historians" and other icons of "secularism". Which is why I cannot help frowning when I see Meera Nanda forget her limitations and berate a towering personality like Goel."

"My father started Biblia Impex from a small table in a friend's office. He would sit on one side of the table, and his typist would sit on the other side. He was one of the first Indian publishers to send books abroad without asking for advance payment. Other export businesses would never do this. They would always require money in advance. My father understood European integrity. He knew they were trustworthy."

"The only substantial contribution was made by an RSS lawyer hailing from Anantnag in Kashmir. “I have studied Islam in depth,” he said, “and found it to be a great religion. I cannot understand anyone placing Islam in the dock.” Ironically enough this defender of Islam was literally the first to be shot dead when the ethnic cleansing started in the Valley in the winter of 1989."

"The word secular is defined in the dictionaries as "the belief that the state, morals, education, etc. should be independent of religion." But in India it means only one thing -- eschewing everything Hindu and espousing everything Islamic."

"Meanwhile, please pardon us for saying that we have found no music in the language of your letter, no rhyme in your reasoning, no value in your judgments, and no art or education in your performance as a whole."

"In the case of Islam, our effort aims at raising the dialogue from the street level to the level of scholarly platforms. For a long time, Hindus have been flattering Muslims by seeing nothing wrong in the doctrine of Islam. For a long time, Muslims have been taking to the streets and shedding blood whenever and wherever Hindus object to their behaviour pattern. Muslims have never been asked by Hindus to reflect on the dogmas of Islam, and revise them wherever they go against peaceful coexistence. We are appealing to Hindus to start asking some questions about Islam so that Muslims are made to rethink. If asking questions with a view to holding a dialogue is provoking violence, we plead guilty again. Hindus had a long tradition of asking questions even about their own cherished doctrines. I wonder if you are well-acquainted with our acharyas - Brahmanic, Buddhist and the rest. It was only with the advent of Islam and, later on, Christianity that Hindus were terrorised into the habit of remaining silent when faced with wild claims and not asking any questions. We are trying to revive the ancient Hindu tradition."