So Much to Think About

I use Apple Notes app religiously ( no pun intended). I save quotes, quips, etc from daily readings. I save them, hoping to eventually post about them or share in “So Much to Think About”. Many stay hidden. I’m currently up to 1,404 . There is no intended theme or thread, but they may give some insight into the drumbeat in my head. Going forward I intend to post “So Much to Think about” on Fridays. I’m letting you so you can mark your calendar :). BTW today is Friday, so enjoy this post.

Slowing down (traveling “off road”)
“I counted my years and found that I have less time to live from here on than I have lived up to now.
 I feel like that child who won a packet of sweets: he ate the first with pleasure, but when he realized that there were few left, he began to enjoy them intensely.
 I no longer have time for endless meetings where statutes, rules, procedures and internal regulations are discussed, knowing that nothing will be achieved.
 I no longer have time to support the absurd people who, despite their chronological age, haven’t grown up.
 My time is too short: I want the essence, my soul is in a hurry.  I don’t have many sweets in the package anymore.
 I want to live next to human people, very human, who know how to laugh at their mistakes and who are not inflated by their triumphs and who take on their responsibilities.  Thus human dignity is defended and we move towards truth and honesty.  It is the essential that makes life worth living.
I want to surround myself with people who know how to touch hearts, people who have been taught by the hard blows of life to grow with gentle touches of the soul.
 Yes, I’m in a hurry, I’m in a hurry to live with the intensity that only maturity can give.
 I don’t intend to waste any of the leftover sweets.  I am sure they will be delicious, much more than what I have eaten so far.
 My goal is to reach the end satisfied and at peace with my loved ones and my conscience.
 We have two lives and the second begins when you realize you only have one. “
 Mario de Andrade

Difficult subjects
… difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without [any]doubt, what is laid before him.

Mastery of Information
Our culture tends to have a focus on the mastery of information, the management of the facts. I recall a famous television evangelist who touted himself as having memorized the entire Bible. It made him a television evangelist, not a great soul or a deeply wise man. It can indeed be little more than a carnival trick.
The soul is ever so much more about who we are, and the character of who we are than what we are and what we know.
FR Stephen Freeman

Parable of topsoil and wheelbarrow
Having moved house, and a keen gardener, he had a large truck load of topsoil delivered, if I remember the story correctly, ten tons. The driver dumped all of it on his front driveway. The only way to move it to the back garden was shovel by shovel, wheelbarrow by wheelbarrow. And that, said the good Dr Taylor, was also how he wrote his commentary – over the years, word by word, verse by verse and chapter by chapter. 
Jim Gordon

Right Affections
I had sooner play cards against a man who was quite sceptical about ethics, but bred to believe that ‘a gentleman does not cheat’, than against an irreproachable moral philosopher who had been brought up among sharpers. In battle it is not syllogisms that will keep the reluctant nerves and muscles to their post in the third hour of the bombardment.
C S Lewis

Virtue as bravery
At root, all virtue is a form of bravery. But bravery is only heroic if there is an objective value at stake, a true good in question. Remove that value and you remove the distinction between virtue and vice, between heroic sacrifice and self-serving cowardice. 
Richard Beck

Fountain Pens
We once wrote with quills from real birds dipped (the quills, that is) in ink, then we wrote with crude hand-made quill pens that were also dipped in ink, then we wrote with fountain pens that had a hidden reservoir that sometimes leaked, and then Mr. Biro invented the discardable ball-point pen, and now you and I have colors and shapes and any kind of pen we want. They are cheap and they are easy. Some see this as clear evidence of progress and improvement. They are not because they are cosmic pollutants.
Unless you prefer a pen that stays with you for life, like a fountain pen. I know that using a ballpoint pen is easy and that it is the end of a line of technological progress, but there is something special and personal about a fountain pen (unless you are hard of heart). It becomes your friend after you’ve filled it for years — and I prefer piston fillers rather than the little plastic cartridges that also clog up the world.
Go ahead, pick up a fountain pen and feel a work of art — Bics are trash. They are cheap; the ink is fake; the pen has no balance; it makes one wonder how humans could do this to themselves. Try on a Pelikan or a Mont Blanc or a Conway Steward or a Waterman or a Schaeffer — I’ve got several and each is a friend.
Scot McKnight

Virtues for today
Fallibilism: we have to admit we may not be right all the time. Which means “No one gets the final say.”
We have to admit that at least some, if not most, of what we claim as knowledge could in some senses be wrong. Nothing is absolute knowledge for any human. A genuine sense that “I might be wrong” permits thinking with others who may help us reach a better position.
Empiricism: what you claim has to be discoverable by others using the same method. Which means “No one has personal authority.”
Jonathan Rausch

“When you have something to say, silence is a lie.” Jordon Peterson

If you’re riding’ ahead of the herd, take a look back every now and then to make sure it’s still there. Will Rogers