John of Ruysbroeck Spiritual Espousals, complete works, Mechelen 1934, vol. 1, p. 148. English version New York 1953.
Context: God is more interior to us than we are to ourselves.
His acting in us is nearer and more inward than our own actions.
God works in us from inside outwards;
creatures work on us from the outside.
John of Ruysbroeck Spiritual Espousals, complete works, Mechelen 1934, vol. 1, p. 148. English version New York 1953.
“Our idea of God tells us more about ourselves than about Him.”
To Army War College Graduates, Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania, 7 June 2008 http://www.jcs.mil/chairman/speeches/07JUN08_ArmyWarCollege_Commencement.html, CJCS.
[2005, Stations of Wisdom, World Wisdom, 94, 978-0-94153218-1]
God, Reverential fear and love
Letter (19 April 1951); published in Letters of C. S. Lewis (1966), p. 230
Source: Put on Your Crown: Life-Changing Moments on the Path to Queendom
“In practice, the enemy has been making much more propaganda for us than we have ourselves.”
Instructions Given at the Conference (Fall 1950)
1950's
“God understands that part of us which is more than what we think we are.”
Lectures XIV and XV, "The Value of Saintliness"
1900s, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)
Context: The gods we stand by are the gods we need and can use, the gods whose demands on us are reinforcements of our demands on ourselves and on one another. What I then propose to do is, briefly stated, to test saintliness by common sense, to use human standards to help us decide how far the religious life commends itself as an ideal kind of human activity. … It is but the elimination of the humanly unfit, and the survival of the humanly fittest, applied to religious beliefs; and if we look at history candidly and without prejudice, we have to admit that no religion has ever in the long run established or proved itself in any other way. Religions have approved themselves; they have ministered to sundry vital needs which they found reigning. When they violated other needs too strongly, or when other faiths came which served the same needs better, the first religions were supplanted.
