“I'm reading a very quaint American book, The Power of Positive Thinking, written, I'd suppose, by a sectarian minister, presumably of Methodist dye. (Norman Vincent Peale).. He's full of stories of prayers heard - and extols the power of prayer.."Before leaving for an important business conference I brace myself with texts like 'If God be for us, who can be against us?'… Then I stalk into the conference room, sure of my victory, and carry off the most marvellous deal.." This, in essence is the burden of the whole book. That's what people call Christian optimism. But it's wasted on us - we've been spoilt for this sort of thing… But isn't it rather self suggestion than authentic religious impulse? It doesn't seem to have dawned on him that suffering, disappointment, defeat or loss might also have some point too, or that God's designs could sometimes be hidden…”
Broken Lights Letters 1951-59.
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Ida Friederike Görres 57
Austrian writer and noble 1901–1971Related quotes
Speaking after a Labour Party conference speech on energy policy by Richard March (July 1967), quoted in Andrew Taylor, The Politics of the Yorkshire Miner (London: Croom Helm, 1984), p. 60
Lecture XIX, "Other Characteristics"
1900s, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)
As quoted in John Clute, "Scores" http://www.strangehorizons.com/2010/20100118/clute-c.shtml, in Strange Horizons (18 January 2010)
Galileo's Dream (2009)
“How important, therefore, to learn before leaving England to move man through God by prayer alone.”
(J. Hudson Taylor. A Retrospect. Philadelphia: China Inland Mission, n.d., 15).
“I knew God had heard my prayer when I learned that it was you and no other who drew this case.”
“One judge is coughing his life out into bloody handkerchiefs and the other is burying his wife, and you think this is how God answers your prayers?”
Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Heartfire (1998), Chapter 11.
To the 1864 general conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, as quoted in Abraham Lincoln : A History Vol. 6 (1890) by John George Nicolay and John Hay, Ch. 15, p. 324
1860s
On her directorial debut film Higher Ground, as quoted in " The One-Minute Interview with Vera Farmiga http://www.gq.com/story/vera-farmiga-higher-ground-interview" by Andrew Richdale at GQ (August 25, 2011)