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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Rightly defined philosophy is simply the love of wisdom.
Actual life was chaos, but there was something terribly logical in the imagination. It was the imagination that set remorse to dog the feet of sin. It was the imagination that made each crime bear its misshapen brood. In the common world of fact the wicked were not punished, nor the good rewarded. Success was given to the strong, failure thrust upon the weak. That was all.
We all dream dreams of unity, of purity; we all dream that there's an authoritative voice out there that will explain things, including ourselves.
The best stories don't come from "good vs. bad" but "good vs. good.
I think people really need to think what it's like to have all of society arrayed against you.
You have certainly observed the curious fact that a given word which is perfectly clear when you hear it or use it in everyday language, and which does not give rise to any difficulty when it is engaged in the rapid movement of an ordinary sentence becomes magically embarrassing, introduces a strange resistance, frustrates any effort at definition as soon as you take it out of circulation to examine it separately and look for its meaning after taking away its instantaneous function.