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If We Feel That Any Habit Or Pursuit, Harmless In Itself, Is Keeping Us From God And Sinking Us Deeper In The Things Of Earth; If We Find That Things Which Others Can Do With Impunity Are For Us The Occasion Of Falling, Then Abstinence Is Our Only Course. Abstinence Alone Can Recover For Us The Real Value Of What Should Have Been For Our Help But Which Has Been An Occasion Of Falling. ... It Is Necessary That We Should Steadily Resolve To Give Up Anything That Comes Between Ourselves And God.

-William Ralph Inge

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If We Feel That

William Ralph Inge

...

If We Feel That Any Habit Or Pursuit, Harmless In Itself, Is Keeping Us From God And Sinking Us Deeper In The Things Of Earth; If We Find That Things Which Others Can Do With Impunity Are For Us The Occasion Of Falling, Then Abstinence Is Our Only Course. Abstinence Alone Can Recover For Us The Real Value Of What Should Have Been For Our Help But Which Has Been An Occasion Of Falling. ... It Is Necessary That We Should Steadily Resolve To Give Up Anything That Comes Between Ourselves And God.

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Man Will Never Be Entirely Willing To Give Up This World For The Next Nor The Next World For This.

It Is Astonishing With How Little Wisdom Mankind Can Be Governed, When That Little Wisdom Is Its Own.

Events In The Past May Be Roughly Divided Into Those Which Probably Never Happened And Those Which Do Not Matter.

Deliberate Cruelty To Our Defenceless And Beautiful Little Cousins Is Surely One Of The Meanest And Most Detestable Vices Of Which A Human Being Can Be Guilty.

The Happy People Are Those Who Are Producing Something; The Bored People Are Those Who Are Consuming Much And Producing Nothing.

To Become A Popular Religion, It Is Only Necessary For A Superstition To Enslave A Philosophy.

Nature Takes Away Any Faculty That Is Not Used.

God Does Not Always Punish A Nation By Sending It Adversity. More Often He Gives The Oppressors Their Hearts' Desire, And Sends Leanness Withal Into Their Soul.

In Imperialism Nothing Fails Like Success. If The Conqueror Oppresses His Subjects, They Will Become Fanatical Patriots, And Sooner Or Later Have Their Revenge; If He Treats Them Well, And Governs Them For Their Good, They Will Multiply Faster Than Their Rulers, Till They Claim Their Independence.

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A Good Government Remains The Greatest Of Human Blessings And No Nation Has Ever Enjoyed It.

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Originality Is Undetected Plagiarism.

Nobody Is Bored When He Is Trying To Make Something That Is Beautiful Or To Discover Something That Is True.

The Whole Of Creation, With All Of Its Laws, Is A Revelation Of God.

The Aim Of Education Is The Knowledge, Not Of Facts, But Of Values.

We Must Cut Our Coat According To Our Cloth, And Adapt Ourselves To Changing Circumstances.

All Faith Consists Essentially In The Recognition Of A World Of Spiritual Values Behind, Yet Not Apart From, The World Of Natural Phenomena.

A Man Is Never So Truly And Intensely Himself As When He Is Most Possessed By God. It Is Impossible To Say Where, In The Spiritual Life, The Human Will Leaves Off And Divine Grace Begins.

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The Modern World Belongs To The Half-educated, A Rather Difficult Class, Because They Do Not Realize How Little They Know.

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To Marry Is To Get A Binocular View Of Life.

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A Man May Build Himself A Throne Of Bayonets, But He Cannot Sit On It.

There Is No Law Of Progress. Our Future Is In Our Own Hands, To Make Or To Mar. It Will Be An Uphill Fight To The End, And Would We Have It Otherwise? Let No One Suppose That Evolution Will Ever Exempt Us From Struggles. 'you Forget,' Said The Devil, With A Chuckle, 'that I Have Been Evolving Too.

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Faith Always Contains An Element Of Risk, Of Venture; And We Are Impelled To Make The Venture By The Affinity And Attraction Which We Feel In Ourselves.

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Admiration For Ourselves And Our Institutions Is Too Often Measured By Our Contempt And Dislike For Foreigners.

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They Who Will Live For Others Shall Have Great Troubles, But They Shall Seem To Them Small. Those Who Will Live For Themselves Shall Have Small Troubles, But They Shall Seem To Them Great.

Live For Others

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Originality, I Fear, Is Too Often Only Undetected And Frequently Unconscious Plagiarism.

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