To turn water into wine, and what is common into what is holy, is indeed the glory of Christianity.
Frederick William RobertsonRead
As the tree is fertilized by its own broken branches and fallen leaves, and grows out of its own decay, so men and nations are bettered and improved by trial, and refined out of broken hopes and blighted expectations.
Interpretation
Growth often comes from setbacks and failures.
This quote illustrates the idea that just as a tree can thrive from decay and what it sheds, individuals and societies also improve through their struggles and disappointments. It emphasizes that adversity and challenges are essential for personal and collective growth, teaching resilience and wisdom through the process of refinement from past failures.
In practice
During a motivational speech about overcoming challenges.
To turn water into wine, and what is common into what is holy, is indeed the glory of Christianity.
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.
There are three things in the world that deserve no mercy, hypocrisy, fraud, and tyranny.
You come of the Lord Adam and the Lady Eve," said Aslan. "And that is both honour enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar, and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the greatest emperor on earth. Be content.
But knowledge does not protect one. Life is contemptuous of knowledge; it forces it to sit in the anterooms, to wait outside. Passion, energy, lies: these are what life admires. Still, anything can be endured if all humanity is watching. The martyrs prove it. We live in the attention of others. We turn to it as flowers to the sun.
He that hath lost his credit is dead to the world.
To narrate is to give oneself: it seems obvious that literature, as an effort to communicate fully, will continue to be blocked so long as misery and illiteracy exist, and so long as the possessors of power continue to carry on with impunity their policy of collective imbecilization through the mass media.
War is not the best way of settling differences; it is the only way of preventing their being settled for you.
The life of a sannyasin should be a life of no expectations. And then every moment is such a bliss, such a benediction, because whatsoever God gives is so much. Then you always feel grateful. But your desires are so much that whatsoever God gives always looks so little; and you feel frustrated, and you feel complaints, and you cannot feel grateful. And without gratitude, there is no possibility of prayer arising in your heart. Gratitude is prayer.
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