To celebrate my upcoming fortieth birthday, I’m sharing forty quotes that have become meaningful to me. Many of these, especially the ones from the Bible, came to mind right away. Others I culled from underlined and highlighted sections of books I have read. All deserve to be read slowly and thoughtfully.

1

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

John 3:16

2

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

Romans 8:1

3

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.

Proverbs 3:5-6

4

Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.

Matthew 6:9

5

Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.

Matthew 11:28

6

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.

1 John 1:7

7

The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge;
fools despise wisdom and instruction.

Proverbs 1:7

8

Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching.

1 Timothy 4:16

9

He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.

Ecclesiastes 3:11

10

Love, and do what you will: whether you hold your peace, through love hold your peace; whether you cry out, through love cry out; whether you correct, through love correct; whether you spare, through love do you spare: let the root of love be within, of this root can nothing spring but what is good.

Augustine, Homily on the First Epistle of John

11

You awake us to delight in your praise; for you have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.

Augustine, Confessions

12

The pure of heart see God everywhere. Everything is brimful of God.

Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics

13

What is your only comfort in life and in death? That I am not my own, but belong—body and soul, in life and in death— to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ.

Heidelberg Catechism

14

Q: What is the chief end of man?
A: Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.

Westminster Shorter Catechism

15

Let us acknowledge our range: we are something, and we are not everything.

Pascal, Pensées

16

Not only is it through Jesus Christ that we know God but it is only through Jesus Christ that we know ourselves. We know life and death only through Jesus Christ. Without Jesus Christ, we do not know what our life, nor our death, nor God, nor ourselves really are.

Pascal, Pensées

17

Man’s wretchedness proves his greatness. It is the wretchedness of a great noble, the wretchedness of a dethroned king.

Pascal, Pensées

18

Above all, do not lie to yourself. A man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point where he does not discern any truth either in himself or anywhere around him, and thus falls into disrespect towards himself and others. Not respecting anyone, he ceases to love, and having no love, he gives himself up to passions and coarse pleasures in order to occupy and amuse himself, and in his vices reaches complete bestiality, and it all comes from lying continually to others and himself.

Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

19

What you see and what you hear depends a great deal on where you are standing. It also depends on what sort of person you are.

C. S. Lewis, The Magician’s Nephew

20

Plunge every day of your life into the spring which quenches and yet ever renews your thirst. . . . Tell me what you love and I will tell you what you are.

A. G. Sertillanges, The Intellectual Life

21

If a man wants to read good books, he must make a point of avoiding bad ones; for life is short, and time and energy limited.

Schopenhauer, Some Forms of Literature

22

You will not improve at all as a reader if all you read are books that are well within your capacity. You must tackle books that are beyond you, or, as we have said, books that are over your head. Only books of that sort will make you stretch your mind. And unless you stretch, you will not learn.

Mortimer Adler, How to Read a Book

23

A researcher’s most valuable ability is the knack of being puzzled by ordinary things: like the shape of coffee rings; or why Shakespeare has Lady Macbeth die offstage rather than on; or why your eyebrows don’t grow as long as the hair on your head.

Kate Turabian, A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations

24

The study of history is the best medicine for a sick mind; for in history you have a record of the infinite variety of human experience plainly set out for all to see; and in that record you can find for yourself and your country both examples and warnings: fine things to take as models, base things, rotten through and through, to avoid.

Livy, Early History of Rome

25

Blind unbelief is sure to err,
And scan His work in vain;
God is His own Interpreter,
And He will make it plain.

William Cowper, “God Moves in a Mysterious Way”

26

What the heart most wants the mind finds most reasonable, the emotions find valuable, and the will finds doable.

Tim Keller, Preaching: Communicating Faith in an Age of Skepticism

27

It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. . . . There are no ordinary people.

C. S. Lewis, “The Weight of Glory”

28

Christian
Alas, poor Death! where is thy glory?
Where is thy famous force, thy ancient sting?

Death
Alas, poor mortal, void of story!
Go spell and read how I have killed thy King.

Christian
Poor Death! and who was hurt thereby?
Thy curse being laid on Him makes thee accursed.

Death
Let losers talk: yet thou shalt die;
These arms shall crush thee.

Christian
Spare not, do thy worst.
I shall be one day better than before;
Thou so much worse, that thou shalt be no more.

George Herbert, “A Dialogue-Anthem”

29

I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.

C. S. Lewis “Is Theology Poetry?”

30

He jests at scars that never felt a wound.

Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

31

In the wizard’s face he saw at first only lines of care and sorrow; though as he looked more intently he perceived that under all there was a great joy: a fountain of mirth enough to set a kingdom laughing, were it to gush forth.

J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

32

That which unites all true Christians is always more than that which separates them.

Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics

33

Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the more often and steadily we reflect upon them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.

Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason

34

Plan your work, and work your plan. It’s better to say, “I’m glad I did,” than “I wish I had.”

A high school English teacher

35

There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor [a tall hill] high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was a light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

36

It is idle to talk always of the alternative of reason and faith. Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all. If you are a merely a skeptic, you must sooner or later ask yourself the question, “Why should anything go right, even observation and deduction? Why should not good logic be as misleading as bad logic? [Why are they not] both movements in the brain of a bewildered ape?

G. K. Chesteron, Orthodoxy

37

Friendship halves our sorrows and doubles our joys.

Unknown (attributed to various sources)

38

Credibility is the foundation of leadership. People must be able, above all else, to believe in their leaders. To willingly follow them, people must believe that the leaders’ word can be trusted, that they are personally passionate and enthusiastic about their work, and that they have the knowledge and skill to lead.

James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner, The Leadership Challenge

39

Ah, but we want so much more—something the books on aesthetics take little notice of. But the poets and the mythologies know all about it. We do not want merely to see beauty, though, God knows, even that is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words—to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it. . . . Apparently, then, our lifelong nostalgia, our longing to be reunited with something in the universe from which we now feel cut off, to be on the inside of some door which we have always seen from the outside, is no mere neurotic fancy, but the truest index of our real situation. And to be at last summoned inside would be both glory and honour beyond all our merits and also the healing of that old ache.

C. S. Lewis, “The Weight of Glory”

40

But still we long for the comfort, and the truth, of being fully seen. That would make for a good ending, wouldn’t it?

Julian Barnes, Nothing to Be Frightened Of