To turn water into wine, and what is common into what is holy, is indeed the glory of Christianity.
There are three things in the world that deserve no mercy, hypocrisy, fraud, and tyranny.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote emphasizes that hypocrisy, fraud, and tyranny are so detrimental that they should not be tolerated or forgiven.
Frederick William Robertson's quote highlights three reprehensible behaviors—hypocrisy, fraud, and tyranny—that are fundamentally damaging to society. By asserting that these actions deserve no mercy, it underscores the importance of integrity and authenticity, suggesting that such behaviors erode trust and justice, which are essential for the functioning of a healthy society. This perspective invites us to reflect on our values and the consequences of allowing these negative traits to persist.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about ethical leadership, one could quote this to stress the importance of honesty.
More from Frederick William Robertson
All quotes →The one who will be found in trial capable of great acts of love is ever the one who is always doing considerate small ones.
No one can be great, or good, or happy except through the inward efforts of themselves.
In these two things the greatness of man consists, to have God dwelling in us as to impart His character to us, and to have Him dwelling in us, that we recognize His presence, and know that we are His, and He is ours. The one is salvation; the other, the assurance of it.
The office of poetry is not to make us think accurately, but feel truly.
False notions of liberty are strangely common. People talk of it as if it meant the liberty of doing whatever one likes - whereas the only liberty that a man, worthy of the name of man, ought to ask for, is, to have all restrictions, inward and outward, removed that prevent his doing what he ought.
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You get a little picture that reflects the whole. You can get readers interested in the life of one guy, and he can reflect the whole life around him. And it's a better picture than the politicians give you.
Honor and shame from no condition rise. Act well your part: there all the honor lies.
Mad; adj. Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence; not conforming to standards of thought, speech, and action derived by the conformants from study of themselves; at odds with the majority; in short, unusual. It is noteworthy that persons are pronounced mad by officials destitute of evidence that they themselves are sane.
Our works in stone, in paint, in print, are spared, some of them, for a few decades or a millennium or two, but everything must finally fall in war, or wear away into the ultimate and universal ash - the triumphs, the frauds, the treasures and the fakes. A fact of life: we're going to die. "Be of good heart," cry the dead artists out of the living past. "Our songs will all be silenced, but what of it? Go on singing." Maybe a man's name doesn't matter all that much.
The sick do not ask if the hand that smoothes their pillow is pure, nor the dying care if the lips that touch their brow have known the kiss of sin.
Should the States reject this excellent Constitution, the probability is, an opportunity will never again offer to cancel another in peacethe next will be drawn in blood.