For my part, I love to stand foot to foot with an honest foeman. To open warfare, bold and true hearts raise no objection but the ground of quarrel; it is covert enmity which we have most cause to fear, and best reason to loathe. That crafty kindness which inveigles me to sacrifice principle is the serpent in the grass - deadly to the incautious wayfarer.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the value of honesty in conflict and warns against deceit disguised as kindness.
Charles Spurgeon discusses the importance of facing one's adversaries with honesty and integrity, contrasting this with covert hostility that hides behind a facade of kindness. He suggests that true enmity is to be feared more than open conflict and warns that those who disguise their intentions can lead others to compromise their principles, comparing such deceit to a hidden danger like a snake in the grass.
In practice
In a speech about ethical leadership, this quote illustrates the importance of transparency in challenging situations.
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.
Myths give us our sense of personal identity, answering the question, 'Who am I?'
Do you wish me a good morning, or mean that it is a good morning whether I want it or not; or that you feel good this morning; or that it is a morning to be good on?
To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker.
Nintendo's philosophy is never to go the easy path; it's always to challenge ourselves and try to do something new.
It is bad to be oppressed by a minority, but it is worse to be oppressed by a majority. For there is a reserve of latent power in the masses which, if it is called into play, the minority can seldom resist. But from the absolute will of an entire people there is no appeal, no redemption, no refuge but treason.
Events are the ephemera of history; they pass across its stage like fireflies, hardly glimpsed before they settle back into darkness and as often as not into oblivion. Every event, however brief, has to be sure a contribution to make, lights up some dark corner or even some wide vista of history. Nor is it only political history which benefits most, for every historical landscape - political, economic, social, even geographical - is illumined by the intermittent flare of the event.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.