Character is always lost when a high ideal is sacrificed on the altar of conformity and popularity.
Interpretation
Sacrificing one's ideals for the sake of fitting in leads to a loss of personal integrity.
This quote emphasizes the importance of maintaining one's character and integrity in the face of societal pressures to conform. Charles Spurgeon suggests that by prioritizing conformity and popularity over one's high ideals, individuals risk losing their true selves and the values that define them, ultimately leading to a degradation of personal character and authenticity.
In practice
This quote can be used in a motivational speech about the importance of staying true to oneself.
Amusement should be used to do us good “like a medicine”: it must never be used as the food of the man...Many have had all holy thoughts and gracious resolutions stamped out by perpetual trifling. Pleasure so called is the murderer of thought. This is the age of excessive amusement: everybody craves for it, like a babe for its rattle.
When you see no present advantage, walk by faith and not by sight. Do God the honor to trust Him when it comes to matters of loss for the sake of principle.
It is far easier to fight with sin in public than to pray against it in private.
You will never glory in God till first of all God has killed your glorying in yourself.
After faith comes repentance, or, rather, repentance is faith's twin brother and is born at the same time.
["All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth unto such as keep his covenant."] The original Hebrew word that has been translated "paths" means "well-worn roads' or "wheel tracks," such ruts as wagons make when they go down our green roads in wet weather and sink in up to the axles. God's ways are at times like heavy wagon tracks that cut deep into our souls, yet all of them are merciful.
When God is our Holy Father, sovereignty, holiness, omniscience, and immutability do not terrify us; they leave us full of awe and gratitude. Sovereignty is only tyrannical if it is unbounded by goodness; holiness is only terrifying if it is untempered by grace; omniscience is only taunting if it is unaccompanied by mercy; and immutability is only torturous if there is no guarantee of goodwill.
You are awareness, disguised as a person.
Things do exist that are worth standing up for without compromise. To me it seems that peace and social justice are such things, as is Christ himself.
Adversity is the state in which man most easily becomes acquainted with himself, being especially free of admirers then.
The life most of us live are lives we are forced to live by immediate needs, influences, and pressures.
I didn't want to be a boy, ever, but I was outraged that his height and intelligence were graces for him and gaucheries for me.
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