The common man prays, 'I want a cookie right now!' And God responds, 'If you'd listen to what I say, tomorrow it will bring you 100 cookies.

~ Criss Jami

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No spring nor summer beauty hath such grace as I have seen in one autumnal

~ John Donne

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The literal sense of the author was creation is the orderly act of a loving Creator God. What the modern reader often hears, however, is The universe was made in six 24-hour days. This is as wrong-headed as taking me to mean I actually stood in line a million years or that my cardiac tissue has been torn in half or that Christ had delusions of being a grape plant.-- Making Senses of Scripture

~ Mark Shea

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People debate over whether or not there is a literal Hell, in the literal sense often described as fire and eternal torture, which, to many, seems to be too harsh a punishment. If men really want to fear something, they should be fearing separation from God, the supposedly more comforting alternative to a literal Hell. For separation from the authorship of love, mercy, and goodness is the ultimate torture. If you think a literal Hell sounds too bad, you are very much underestimating the pain of being absolutely, wholly separated from the goodness while exposed to the reality of the holiness of God.

~ Criss Jami

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The utter unbroken silence was more appalling than any ominous noise, than the loudest yells of anguish, than the most piercing screaming...Dead silence.Literally dead.

~ Simona Panova

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Not taking the Bible (or other texts based on 'revealed truths') literally leaves it up to the reader to cherry-pick elements for belief. There exists no guide for such cherry-picking, and zero religious sanction for it.

~ Jeffrey Tayler

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To be depressed or neurotic is passive. It has happened to all of us, we are it's victim and we have no control over it.

~ William Glasser

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