The people who know God well - the mystics, the hermits, those who risk everything to find God - always meet a lover, not a dictator. God is never found to be an abusive father or a tyrannical mother, but always a lover who is more than we dared hope for. How different than the "account manager" that most people seem to worship. God is a lover who receives and forgives everything.

In the face of the idea that truth might afford the opposite of satisfaction and turn out to be completely shocking to humanity at any given historical moment, ... the fathers of pragmatism made the satisfaction of the subject the criterion of truth. For such a doctrine there is no possibility of rejecting or even criticizing any species of belief that is enjoyed by its adherents.

My parents' loss was compensated by the birth of my son Aryan and daughter Suhana. I believe they're my parents. In comparison to them, I behave childishly. My 13-year-old daughter and 15-year-old son behave like my mother and father. They're not my weakness. I love them a lot and give them a lot. I'll give them so much that by the time they are adults they wouldn't want anything.

Each person is entitled to some version of God that seems real, yet many versions contradict one another. The God of any religion is only a fragment of God. This has to be true, because a being who is unbounded has no image, no role to play, no location either inside or outside the cosmos, whereas religions offer many images--father, mother, lawgiver, judge, ruler of the universe.

I'll tell you what autism is. In 99 percent of the cases, it's a brat who hasn't been told to cut the act out. That's what autism is. What do you mean they scream and they're silent? They don't have a father around to tell them, 'Don't act like a moron. You'll get nowhere in life. Stop acting like a putz. Straighten up. Act like a man. Don't sit there crying and screaming, idiot.'

To follow Christ is to become more like Him. It is to learn from His character. As spirit children of our Heavenly Father, we do have the potential to incorporate Christlike attributes into our life and character. The Savior invites us to learn His gospel by living His teachings. To follow Him is to apply correct principles and then witness for ourselves the blessings that follow.

Oh, it is wonderful to know that our Heavenly Father loves us—even with all our flaws! His love is such that even should we give up on ourselves, He never will. We see ourselves in terms of yesterday and today. Our Heavenly Father sees us in terms of forever. Although we might settle for less, Heavenly Father won’t, for He sees us as the glorious beings we are capable of becoming.

Shook is the musical universe I created. I come from a classical and jazz background and my father is a jazz pianist, so my world bears largely the marks of this influence. As a sort of gateway, I started composing my own music on the computer at the age of 13. Before Shook, I had not yet discovered the kind of music I wanted to dedicate myself to, so I did a little of everything.

An Albanian’s house is the dwelling of God and the guest.’ Of God and the guest, you see. So before it is the house of its master, it is the house of one’s guest. The guest, in an Albanian’s life, represents the supreme ethical category, more important than blood relations. One may pardon the man who spills the blood of one’s father or of one’s son, but never the blood of a guest.

Don't wait for a feeling or love in order to share Christ with a stranger. You already love your heavenly Father, and you know that this stranger is created by Him, but separated from Him... so take those first steps in evangelism because you love God. It is not primarily out of compassion for humanity that we share our faith or pray for the lost; it is first of all, love for God.

When Jesus sent forth his servants formerly he sent them to preach this Gospel. When the Father and the Son and Moroni and others came to Joseph Smith, he had a priesthood conferred upon him which he conferred upon others for the purpose of manifesting the laws of life, the Gospel of the Son of God, by direct authority, that light and truth might be spread forth among all nations.

The center of life is female - we all come from our mothers. I've always drawn women or female spirits. I feel deeply about this - who gives a damn about some guy on a cross? My mother's creativity was smothered after she married and raised a family, but she was supportive of me - even my father expected me to carry on in her footsteps. I prefer to have no kids but lots of animals.

Somewhere, sometime, somehow you got tangled up in garbage, and you've been avoiding God. You've allowed a veil of guilt to come between you and your Father. You wonder if you could ever feel close to God again. The message of the torn flesh is you can. God welcomes you. God is not avoiding you. God is not resisting you. The curtain is down, the door is open, and God invites you in

Recalling the aftermath of her father's death from alcoholism at age 42, this memoirist reminisces: I couldn't deny that our life was so much better now, but I did miss him. For all the misery he caused, I knew with certainty that he loved us. Those aren't things you can weigh or measure away. ... They're not opposites that cancel each other out. They're both true at the same time.

I feel like I'll be defined more so by ... when I get a chance to play roles where I'm the father/husband. I'd like to continue with the action stuff, but when I get to play the father/husband role, I think that will be the time where I'm playing who I really am. I look forward to playing those kind of heroic characters, the types that are usually associated with Denzel Washington.

The dying boy said: " Father, don't you weep for me; when I get to heaven I will go straight to Jesus and tell Him that ever since I can remember you have tried to lead me to Him." I would rather have my children say that of me after I am gone; or if they die before me, I would rather they should take that message to the Master than to have a monument over me reaching to the skies.

My father stood behind a bar in the back of the room all those years, so one day I could stand behind a podium in the front of a room. That journey, from behind that bar to behind this podium, goes to the essence of the American miracle - that we're exceptional not because we have more rich people here. We're special because dreams that are impossible anywhere else, come true here.

There's a kind of a line between music and math, so I guess I got the music gene, thank goodness. But my mother wasn't too thrilled. She wanted me to go to university and get a degree or do something, and my father, he liked opera so he wasn't too thrilled either, because he wanted me to be an opera singer and I didn't have - as he said, I don't really have the strength to do that.

Today the separation of church and state is America is used to silence the church... The way the concept is used today is totally reversed from the original intent... It is used today as a false political dictum in order to restrict the influence of Christian ideas... To have suggested the state separated from religion and religious influence would have amazed the Founding Fathers.

For Germany, Poland is now a more important trade partner than Russia. With respect to history, our peoples will require more time for the wounds to heal. But it is also important to stick to the truth in accounting for the past. This is not compatible with, for instance, TV movies such as "Our mothers, our fathers" that try to partly shift the liability for Nazi crimes to us Poles.

What is it to be a gentleman? Is it to be honest, to be gentle, to be generous, to be brave, to be wise, and, possessing all these qualities, to exercise them in the most graceful outward manner? Ought a gentleman to be a loyal son, a true husband, an honest father? Ought his life to be decent, his bills to be paid, his taste to be high and elegant, his aims in life lofty and noble?

That government is best which governs the least, so taught the courageous founders of this nation. This simple declaration is diametrically opposed to the all too common philosophy that the government should protect and support one from the cradle to the grave. The policy of the Founding Fathers has made our people and our nation strong. The opposite leads inevitably to moral decay.

The Bible talks about how God uses difficult situations to develop our character and get us stronger. The death of my father is probably the biggest thing that I ever faced. Daddy and I were best friends. But out of that darkness, out of that disappointment in my life, that's what God used to push me into another level of victory or another level of ministry that I never knew I had.

The gift of the Holy Ghost is a gift of power. The Holy Ghost inspires and heals, guides and warns, enhances our natural capacities, inspires charity and humility, makes us smarter than we are, strengthens us during trials, testifies of the Father and the Son, and shows us "all things" that we should do. He helps us do more and become more than we could ever do or become on our own.

We've been a free people living under the law, with faith in our Maker and in our future. I've said before that the most sublime picture in American history is of George Washington on his knees in the snow at Valley Forge. That image personifies a people who know that it's not enough to depend on our own courage and goodness; we must also seek help from God, our Father and Preserver.

Theater is the foundation of how I live my life, actually. My father was a playwright, so I was around it all the time and loved to talk shop with him, just loved it. And basically everything that I hold to be good and true and worthy, I learned in the theater. So not even just about the work, but just about life. Discipline, problem solving, creativity, how to get along with people.

I heard my first laughter on stage, when I was about 10 years old. It was gold pantomime and I remember I was playing Baron Fitznoodle, who was the father of the ugly sisters in "Cinderella." And I walked on and got a great big laugh and I thought that was fantastic, until I looked down and found that my flies were open. And so I always check my flies. I even check my flies on radio.

We want to be saved from our misery, but not from our sin. We want to sin without misery, just as the prodigal son wanted inheritance without the father. The foremost spiritual law of the physical universe is that this hope can never be realized. Sin always accompanies misery. There is no victimless crime, and all creation is subject to decay because of humanity’s rebellion from God.

My father and I were always on the most distant terms when I was a boy--a sort of armed neutrality, so to speak. At irregular intervals this neutrality was broken, and suffering ensued; but I will be candid enough to say that the breaking and the suffering were always divided up with strict impartiality between us--which is to say, my father did the breaking, and I did the suffering.

I want your innocence. I want your blind, unquestioning devotion to your father, your acceptance of who and what he is. I want you to look at me the way you look at him, knowing the worst. I want you to trust me, even when your brain tells you you shouldn't, I want you to ignore common sense and your lifelong need to protect yourself. I want you to give yourself to me, body and soul.

Tonight I saw myself in the dark window as the image of my father, whose life was spent like this, thinking of death, to the exclusion of other sensual matters, so in the end that life was easy to give up, since it contained nothing: even my mother's voice couldn't make him change or turn back as he believed that once you can't love another human being you have no place in the world.

I think Scandinavian Paganism, to us here, is more interesting than any other. It is, for one thing, the latest; it continued in these regions of Europe till the eleventh century; 800 years ago the Norwegians were still worshipers of Odin. It is interesting also as the creed of our fathers; the men whose blood still runs in our veins, whom doubtless we still resemble in so many ways.

Be strong and of a good courage: for unto this people shalt thou divide for an inheritance the land, which I sware unto their fathers to give them. Only be thou strong and very courageous, that thou mayest observe to do according to all the law, which Moses my servant commanded thee: turn not from it to the right hand or to the left, that thou mayest prosper whithersoever thou goest.

If you always meditate on sin, "I am a sinner, I am a sinner," actually you will become a sinner. The psychological approach is, you should forget it - even if you are a sinner, you should think, "I am the son of a Great Father, I am the daughter of a Great Father." Thus you are meditating on the Great Father, and a day is sure to come when you will become one with your Great Father.

I finally made friends with my father when I entered my twenties. We had so little in common when I was a boy, and I am certain I had been a disappointment to him. He did not ask for a child with a book, off in its own world. He wanted a son who did what he had done; swam and boxed and played rugby, and drove cars at speed with abandon and joy, but that was not what he wound up with.

He [Groucho's father] had absolutely no training, and if you had ever seen one of his suits, you'd realize what an accurate statement that is. You see, Pop never used a tape measure. He didn't believe in it. He said he could just look at a man and tell his size, with the result that frequently he'd make a pair of pants with one trouser leg seven or eight inches longer than the other.

And the rules were so clear, you could not deviate from that all. And I think it especially damaged my sisters because there was nothing they could do to get my father's attention, to win his approval. They could not play sports. They could not do these other things. They could not be tough. They could not be macho. And so I think they suffered just from sheer neglect if nothing else.

I grow old, I grow old, the center will not fold. In youth I had hardening of the categories and looked for the father and the mother in every lover. Then I cracked. Then I fragmented. Then the old man in my soul found the god in herself, not in some Jungian fairy tale but in the flesh that fell from the bones and the words that came into my mouth when the look went out of their eyes.

Muqtada belongs to the most famous religious family in Iraq, which is the al-Sadr family. He's really the third in line. [Muqtada's father] drew his power from the first really important al-Sadr, Muhammad Baqir, who was executed by Saddam in 1980, together with his sister. So it's really a family of martyrs, and that's why Muqtada suddenly emerged from nowhere with the fall of Saddam.

Marcus: Cherry? Jillian: My ten-year-old niece. Marcus: She's named after a piece of fruit? Jillian nodded. Jillian: So is her twin sister, Apple. Marcus: You're kidding me. Jillian: Unfortunately, I'm serious. Their father is fond of fruit pies and thought it would be cute. Marcus: And their mother didn't protest? Jillian: She thinks Steven's cute, so she gives him whatever he wants.

Generations are as the days of toilsome mankind; death and birth are the vesper and the matin bells that summon mankind to sleep and to rise refreshed for new advancement. What the father has made, the son can make and enjoy; but has also work of his own appointed him. Thus all things wax and roll onwards: arts, establishments, opinions, nothing is ever completed, but ever completing.

The one thing our Founding Fathers could not foresee - they were farmers, professional men, businessmen giving of their time and effort to an idea that became a country - was a nation governed by professional politicians who had an interest in getting re-elected. They probably envisioned a fellow serving a couple of hitches and then eagerly looking forward to getting back to the farm.

Sometimes people leave you halfway through the wood. Others may decieve you - you decide what's good. You decide alone, but no one is alone. People make mistakes. Fathers, mothers, people make mistakes, holding to their own, thinking they're alone. Honor their mistakes. Fight for their mistakes. Witches can be right. Giants can be good. You decide what's right. You decide what's good.

The most significant piece of advice my father gave me early on about acting was, don't get caught acting. Really believe in what you're doing and then commit to it. Even if it feels uncomfortable, even if you feel that you're gonna look like an ass. It's all acting, but find the truth in a moment as opposed to just pretending you have and rather than trying to act your way out of it.

what I want you to be - I don't mean physically but morally: you are very well physically - is a firm fellow, a fine firm fellow, with a will of your own, with resolution. with determination. with strength of character that is not to be influenced except on good reason by anybody, or by anything. That's what I want you to be. That's what your father, & your mother might both have been

The color of the prisoner's skin, and the form of his features, are not impressed upon the spiritual immortal mind which works beneath. In spite of human pride, he is still your brother, and mine, in form and color accepted and approved by his Father, and yours, and mine, and bears equally with us the proudest inheritance of our race - the image of our Maker. Hold him then to be a Man.

My upbringing was very un-Hollywood. I was born in New York and grew up on a ranch. I was never really smitten by the business in those days, never a fan type - just a basic kid watching TV. It wasn't like I was an insider. I was never really brought into the show business side of my father's life. I guess that's been a blessing and a downfall. But it's made my own work the initiation.

In one family, all goes by two and two. If a member of it has any interest, he or she will confide it to some one other; but the rest know nothing. In another family, all feel what touches one; nothing is kept dark from the father and mother, brothers and sisters--all share. This family habit is by far the better, it strengthens the tie between the members, and makes the home one home.

... if we say that the Father is the origin of the Son and greater than the Son, we do not suggest any precedence in time or superiority in nature of the Father over the Son (cf. Jn. 14:28)? or superiority in any other respect save causation. And we mean by this, that the Son is begotten of the Father and not the Father of the Son, and that the Father naturally is the cause of the Son.

And found in the temple those that sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the changers of money sitting: And when he had made a scourge of small cords, he drove them all out of the temple, and the sheep, and the oxen; and poured out the changers' money, and overthrew the tables; And said unto them that sold doves, Take these things hence; make not my Father's house an house of merchandise.

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